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“I'll be right beside you, no matter where you travel
I'll be there to cheer you, til the sun comes shining through.”- "Cause I Love You” by Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash
“Who fucking plays Yankee fucking Swap anymore anyway??” Izzy finally exclaimed.
In the privacy of the kitchen, Jack let a long, slow breath out. Izzy breaking his silence meant he was finally ready to talk about the five hours they’d just spent at the Hands Family Thanksgiving after their quiet, and on Izzy’s part, completely motionless, two-hour drive home to Vermont.
Izzy had shut down around 4:30 PM after a valiant effort to make the day peaceful for his grandmother. She was the only reason the Hands family even gathered anymore, every year for Thanksgiving in the woods of southern New Hampshire. His family had given up on Christmas Eve and Fourth of July and birthdays- because they were all too different to get along, perhaps Jack and Izzy most of all. But, Izzy’s cousins and aunts and uncles on his late father’s side sucked it up once a year and drove up to Walpole with their assigned potluck dishes for one day together.
Jack had gone with Izzy to the Hands Family Thanksgiving before, back when Izzy was in college, and sometimes it was fine- even fun! Cooking a dish with Izzy the night before. Izzy leaving Jack to talk to the men of the family about sports while he talked to his younger cousins about work and school. Sitting together with his grandmother to talk about their plans for the new year. This year though, Izzy's Uncle Mark was hosting which meant it was going to be shit.
Mark was a smelly, balding man who looked like a weasel, only wore Celtics jerseys, and smoked like a chimney. Not the worst of Izzy’s relatives in Jack’s opinion, but far from the best. Mark would stand as tall as he could next to Jack and try to get him to join him teasing Izzy with some made up story about him as a little kid. It never worked. Jack had seven inches or so on the guy and didn’t give a shit about anything any of them thought. It never worked, but Mark always tried something.
The ride up was beautiful though, and Jack did look forward to that. Late November in New England the fall colors were almost all faded to brown but the air was cold and clean with the promise of snow and Jack-And-Izzy holiday traditions around the corner. Izzy had the fruits of the forest pie they baked the night before securely in his lap, his left hand on Jack’s knee. Their collared shirts were freshly ironed because Izzy had woken up in the wee morning hours and couldn't get back to sleep.
Jack hated when Izzy got anxious like this. When he tied himself up in knots anticipating the worst. He would prefer they spend their shared day off fishing together. Jack could indulge Izzy’s love language of putting worms on his hook for him and surprise him with sandwiches from their favorite bistro. But, Jack also understood Izzy’s old habit of holding on tight to the people he loved, even when it made his fingers bleed. The habits you learn as a kid are the hardest to break, in Jack’s experience. They could go fishing tomorrow.
Instead, they set off at 9 AM for Walpole, New Hampshire. Jack slouched in the driver’s seat with one hand on the wheel and the other out the window; enjoying the chill and letting Izzy’s voice wash over him. Izzy always got chatty when he was nervous. He talked about anything and everything to avoid thinking about what was bothering him. Which was fine with Jack, let him get the nerves out now.
When they pulled into the driveway, Izzy finally went quiet. Jack drove around the side of the little white house with forest green window shutters and parked in the line of cars on the grass. He turned off his truck and turned to his partner.
“Ready June?” Jack asked.
Izzy had his eyes stuck to his uncle’s side porch. The man himself was standing in the doorway with it propped open; smoking and telling an animated story to someone standing inside.
“Hey, Porter,” Jack whispered.
Izzy pulled his eyes away from the house and turned to look at him. Jack could see his thoughts slowly come back to the cab of the truck. It took him a minute but then Izzy was softening and leaning his head back in his seat with a small smile.
“Yeah Johnny,” Izzy said. “I’m ready.”
It was five hours of awkward questions and bullshit conversations about jobs and how gay was “too gay” and of course a Yankee Swap at the end to squeeze in some kind of Christmas. The young people mostly hid in the back room playing games on their phones. At one point Jack had to pull Izzy into a guest room to breathe before he took Aunt Frieda’s bait about whether universal healthcare would even help anyone, which she said in a kitchen full of women making up their kids’ plates and New England sober alcoholics and two disabled veterans.
For a while, Uncle Mark and Aunt Frieda stood on either side of Jack on the side porch where he’d gone to take a break. He zoned out and waited for someone to need help in the kitchen while Mark went on and on about the only other gay people he knew on his construction job and tried to stand on his tippy toes without making it obvious. It was obvious.
“But hey I know you’re not like those gay guys, right Jack?” Mark took one last drag from his cigarette and put it out on his rose-shaped glass ashtray with gold trim sitting on the railing.
At that moment Izzy walked from one room to the other, making eye contact with Jack through the door as he did. They had a long conversation in that little moment. Izzy looked from Mark to the ash tray to Jack with a raised brow, Jack rolling his eyes and grinning, Izzy biting his lip and shaking his head and giving him a subtle “one minute” sign with a lowered hand.
There were only a few things in the world Jack Rackham would crawl over barbed wire and coals for and making Izzy Hands happy was top three- along with Izzy Hands naked mud wrestling with literally anyone and free Mariah Carey floor tickets.
Jack shifts his hands behind his back. “Actually Mark, I sure hope I am.”
Izzy shouted for him at that moment, saying they needed a real chef in the kitchen. Jack eagerly left Mark and Frieda on the porch and skipped into the kitchen in time to see Izzy’s Favorite Cousin Drew swatting him with a dish towel for implying she couldn’t take a turkey out of the oven by herself.
Back home, Izzy shoved the pillows and blankets aside on their couch to sit down without anything soft touching him. Angrily sinking down into it but putting his feet up gently on the coffee table so they didn’t make a sound. “Like Aunt Molly really needed to steal the fucking foot bath from me.”
Izzy and Jack had rules about not expressing negative emotions in physical ways. No making themselves bigger when they felt defensive, no hitting the dinner tables with a fist during a meal or slapping door frames in anger on their way out of the room. They both grew up with and divorced people who punched walls and made threats and they promised themselves and each other that they never would.
Jack and Izzy talked everything through and loved it- relishing in how much easier it was to be in love than either of them had grown up knowing. They routinely sat down at the kitchen table Izzy built for Jack when they moved in together to work through problems of all sizes.
“You want chamomile?” Jack called from the kitchen, already pulling a clean mug out of the dishwasher and turning on the electric kettle.
He heard Izzy move around on the couch and then mumble something.
Jack stuck his head into the room, “sorry, what was that?”
“I SAID-” Izzy started, then paused, breathed deeply again. “I said, yes please, Love. tea.”
Jack moved around a bit more in the kitchen. He washed something in the sink before opening and closing the freezer and a few cupboards. Big jacket still on but shoes off, he walked softly in his slipper socks to the couch with a tray for izzy.
Izzy was lying on it with his head at one end and his boots up on the other.
“Brought you some things to help,” he said. “Plus, I have a surprise in my pocket.”
Izzy’s eyes were shut tight and he didn't move. Jack nodded and set the tray on the table as quietly as he could. Balancing on the back of the couch, he reached out to switch off the standing lamp behind it to leave them in the low glow of the kitchen light. He took the thick black eye mask from the tray, cold from being in the freezer, and leaned over Izzy to carefully slip it over his head to lay over his eyes and forehead.
Izzy’s shoulders relaxed at the cold compress but when he swallowed, Jack could see his jaw was clenched. Still standing over him, Jack kept his fingers on Izzy’s face and ran his knuckles gently over his cheeks, up and down. Up and down from his eyebrows to his jaw line.
After about 30 seconds of this he whispered, “harder?”
“Mhm,” Izzy nodded.
Jack pressed his knuckles harder into Izzy’s cheeks, slowly rubbing up and down and moving closer toward his ears where Izzy’s jaw muscles were locked shut. When his hands passed along Izzy’s tragus’ he whimpered and his hand shot out to hold Jack’s wrist. Jack paused, waiting for Izzy to tap out. When he didn't, Jack kept rubbing slow lines up and down the sides of his face till Izzy’s jaw went slack and he relaxed into the couch.
“Better?”
“Yeah,” Izzy croaked. “Lots.”
He took Izzy’s hand off of his wrist and placed it on the edge of the tray where he felt around and found a tiny bag of shortbread cookies. Jack moved down to Izzy’s feet to unlace his boots. He pulled them off reverently to reveal Izzy’s blue socks with hot dogs all over them, then moved to place them on the side of the couch. He lifted Izzy’s calves and sat on the couch next to him before pulling them back into his lap to start rubbing his boyfriend’s ankles.
“I’m sorry,” Izzy murmured.
“Try again,” Jack replied easily. They were supposed to say “thank you” instead of “I’m sorry” in moments like this, when they felt guilty for needing things. This according to their friend Stede who’d learned a lot from three very expensive marriage counselors even if it did jack shit for him.
“I- I really am sorry though,” Izzy said, chewing slowly on a cookie. “That felt worse than last year. They’re all such pricks, they never change…Or maybe I’m losing my ability to live and breathe bullshit.”
“That’s a good thing, baby.”
“Maybe,” Izzy sighed. “But if I can't rise above it, if I accept who they are, that means I won't want to see most of those chucklefucks ever again. And then I won’t have any family left.”
Jack tried very hard not to react to that last statement, as the person who’d cooked for their Friendsgiving last weekend with all of their closest friends AKA “The Crew”. He kept his hands moving on Izzy’s ankles and breathing evenly.
Izzy pushed the eye mask up to his eyebrows anyway so he could look at Jack’s face. “You know what I mean, Jackie.”
“Found-family catches you just as well as blood, baby,” Jack said. “You know that. I know that. Oftentimes even better.”
Izzy nodded, taking his mug of hot tea off the tray and taking a few long sips. “It’s still bullshit.”
“You’re right. It’s still bullshit.”
“Today was a lot…feel like I’m a lot.”
Jack squeezed Izzy’s ankles in his big hands. “It wasn’t you at all, Izzy. Plus, nothing- nothing about you is too much for me.”
Izzy put his tea back on the tray and coughed, clearing his throat. He looked away and blinked rapidly. Jack let his eyes drop to Izzy’s hot dog socks and didn't push him to talk any more. He’d have a wicked vulnerability hangover tomorrow, and they were on the same page anyway. Even if Izzy was bittersweet about it.
Izzy pulled his right foot out of Jack’s grip to shove at his shoulder. “So? What’s the surprise?”
Jack grunted as he leaned forward and plucked a hand-rolled joint from the tray. Something he’d saved for a special occasion. He grabbed the TV remote and handed both of them over.
“Oh?” Izzy raised his eyebrows under the eye mask.
“It’s a self-care night baby, bubble bath and all. Orders from Captain Jack.”
Izzy chucked, “Aye-Aye.” He tried to swing his legs away to get off the couch but Jack held him fast, trapping Izzy’s feet between his legs.
“Jack! I’m gonna go smoke on the porch! Let- me - go.”
“Ah ah,” Jack couldn't help the smug look on his face. “Don’t you want your surprise?”
“What, letting me pick the movie wasn't your surprise?” Izzy grumbled, crossing his arms.
“Who said you’re picking the movie?”
“Jack.”
He knew Izzy was trying very hard to be patient and verbal and not isolate himself like he usually did after such a long day but Jack couldn't help dragging things out when he had Izzy at his mercy. It had taken them so long to get together- always living in different places and dating different people and not being ready. Even after three years together and two years in this apartment, Jack hungrily soaked up Izzy’s full attention like a lizard in the sun.
“Jack!” Izzy soft-barked at him like a dog trying to be quiet.
“So bossy, Izzy Hands.” Jack shook his head but kept his sparkling eyes on Izzy’s as he reached into the deep pockets of his jacket and pulled out a glass shape. He held it out between them. Izzy kept his eyes on Jack a moment more, challenging him to keep being cheeky, before he looked down.
“Wh- Wai- Ha! No. Is this the- Is this for me?”
Izzy was trying to stay grumpy and not smile so his mouth was going crooked and it made Jack laugh.
“A little gift…’cause I love youuuu,” Jack sang, leaning into him and wiggling his eyebrows.
Jack held Uncle Mark’s glass rose ashtray between them. He’d snatched it, shook it out over the side of the porch and slipped it into his pocket on his way back inside.
Izzy threw his head back laughing, hand on his chest to steady himself like he did when he really lost it. Jack felt himself glow with pride.
“Y-you sneaky fuck,” Izzy wheezed between heaves of breath. He reached out to cup the back of Jack’s neck and pulled him in for a kiss. It was wobbly and wet with Izzy giggling through it, and nipping Jack’s bottom lip when he finally pulled away. “I love you.”
Jack’s eyes went wide and gave a shaky exhale. Hearing that never fucking got old. “Love you too.”
They smiled at each other for a minute while Izzy’s hand scratched the back of Jack’s shaggy mullet. Izzy finally looked away and gave another little chuckle.
“I’m going to smoke on the porch, have a minute by myself. I’ll be back.”
“Okay baby.” Jack let him up and off the couch but smacked his ass- hard- when he started to walk away. So hard that Izzy stumbled.
Izzy turned back to give him a signature scowl but it was ruined with a boyish smile when Jack offered him the ashtray in his outstretched hand. “You forgot this.”
“Little thief,” Izzy scolded, snatching it from him. “I’ll be back.”
“Take your time,” Jack said, propping his own feet up on the coffee table and picking up the remote where Izzy left it to click on the TV.
Izzy slid open the porch door, but paused with one foot still on the carpet. He tapped the edge of the door for a moment, then turned back to Jack.
“Hey,” he said. “Thank you.”
“Of course.”
Izzy ducked his head and looked up at him through his long lashes. “Fishing tomorrow?”
Jack smiled, nodded, feeling a wave of home. Home. Home. wash down his spine. Izzy nodded back before sliding the door shut behind him.
Jack pressed his lips together and allowed himself a quiet squeal of satisfaction and knowing he was the luckiest man in the whole fucking world before he turned back to the TV and got focused. He had to pick and start a movie before Izzy came back inside.