Archive of Our Own ^beta

“You have a boy,” the midwife says.

Jack is gasping and panting. There are no epidurals or painkillers or anything other than the lone midwife surrounded by guards holding guns. The Lord gave, Silas had said after he sent Lucinda away for good, his eyes shining with fury, and so Jack will get only what the Lord saw fit to bestow on him. If Jack sullied himself to make the child, Jack could sully himself to push it out of his body.

And so it feels like every nerve on Jack’s body is on fire, the worst pain he’s ever felt, wave upon wave for how many hours he can’t even begin to guess at. Red-hot agony screams along every inch of his body.

But in his hands—

In his hands lies his son, wailing at the world with his eyes scrunched up, a bundle of warmth, every single tiny part of his body flailing.

“Hello,” Jack whispers to the child he made, somehow, by some miracle, and weeps.

—

There’s a photographer and an interviewer coming in. Silas made it clear to him what the cost of this child was, the moment the doctor proclaimed, disbelief, in his voice, that Jack wasn’t dying, he was pregnant.

So Jack allows someone to clean him and his son up. There are stitches, and they hurt (Silas is a fucking sadist), but Jack bites his lip through them and doesn’t say anything. Won’t say anything. He holds on to his son through it all, and closes his eyes and thinks of D—of better times, and allows himself to be made presentable, not looking like he’s just given birth without any relief from pain, not looking like he’s spilled his insides all over himself grunting and sweating to get his son (his son) out of his body.

The interview happens in one of the nicer state rooms. Jack walks there himself, wincing and shuddering with every step; the guards will catch him if he falls, and that won’t be pleasant at all.

“It’s a blessing,” he says, smiling. “God’s favor is shining on Gilboa, to give us an heir. To continue my father’s line.” Too late, he realizes he’s mis-stepped. His son will be the heir, for Silas—Jack himself doesn’t belong anywhere in the equation.

It’s another he can only make worse by trying to fix it, though. “My son will grow up to be a great king.” (He will not, Jack thinks. Not after Silas. Not like this. He doesn’t voice the thought aloud.) “A king his grandfather will be proud of.”

“And what does the king think of his new grandson?” The interviewer is a perky woman in Silas’ pocket, and she smiles as she says this, as if the king gives any kind of fucks about this child of Jack’s blood except as a pawn. (Silas’ eyes shone, for a moment, when he heard the news. A moment, and Jack can’t be certain he didn’t imagined it, but.)

“He’ll issue his own statement, of course, but I can tell you right now he’s delighted.” Right on cue, the baby’s fists flail again. “As am I.” He bends down to kiss the soft, smooth skin.

There’s a flash. Someone’s snapped a photograph.

Jack hopes (not prays, he’s given up on that) that it’ll be enough for Silas.

—

He earns a week.

A week that passes in a whirl of sleep deprivation, changing the baby—the guards ferry everything a newborn infant could possibly need, courtesy of Silas, to Jack’s apartment—and feeding him—the way his pecs have grown, softened and rounded into breasts, is uncomfortable, especially when they’re full and heavy with milk—and singing to him and rocking him to sleep with all the songs he can dredge up from his childhood. There’s a hazy blanket of pain every time he moves, every time he sits down or walks around or holds his son in his lap. It makes it easier, in a way, to focus. To pretend there’s nothing outside these walls.

But Silas, of course, needs a photograph. A proper photograph of the king and his heir, to go with all of his propaganda.

“My grandson,” Silas says. He holds Jack’s son with a practiced grip, as if he’s held him before, as if he’s used to it. The way he smiles looks real, soft and fond, even to Jack. “His name is—”

And there’s a silence, and Jack knows what Silas wants. A respectable name for a king’s heir, a name that belongs to a prince.

But his son grabs at Silas’ hand and gurgles, and suddenly the name he’d chosen (David, of course, what other choice is there) isn’t worth the burden he’d be putting on him.

“His name is Merry,” Jack says.

Silas’ hand twitches, but there’s nothing he can say. “Merry Benjamin,” he says instead, “my grandson and my heir.”

“My son,” Jack adds. Because Merry is his, brought into this world from his flesh and blood and sweat and tears, his golden child come of the curse Jack was born with, and whatever Silas has planned for Jack is going to be worth it.

—

Jack doesn’t sleep much.

Merry demands all his attention, takes up every corner of his life. After seven months in this prison of an apartment with only himself for company, it’s a relief to have someone to focus on. Someone to hold and talk to and take care of and love.

Someone who trusts him, has no choice but to trust him, absolutely and completely.

“You can trust me,” Jack whispers to Merry, his son, his child. “I’ll always protect you.” He ignores the laughing ghosts lurking in the corner of his eyes. They’ll never go away, he’s realized.

“You’re not a ghost,” he tells Merry, instead of thinking about things he has no control over. “You’re a perfect little living baby, aren’t you?” He kisses Merry’s nose, and Merry squeals and smacks at Jack’s lip.

(When he sleeps, he dreams of golden hair and blue blue eyes and a voice as smooth as silver.

Jack doesn’t sleep much, and he prefers it that way.)

—

“You have four months from the day my grandson was born,” Silas says. “Then you’ll help me find David.”

“No,” Jack says. He says it without thinking, and then he realizes he’s said no to Silas, while Silas is holding Merry. “I mean, I’m sorry, but. I can’t.”

Silas sets Merry down. He’s infinitely gentle with the baby, even pausing to tickle his stomach and indulgently watch him blow at the air.

Then he turns to Jack, and there are storm clouds in his eyes. “You can’t.”

“He’s not going to let me find him,” Jack says, truthfully. After all he’s done, Jack is sure David isn’t going to come when Jack calls.

Silas, however, looks at him. “Don’t play games. You served in Intelligence, you know exactly how to draw him out.”

“I—”

Jack hesitates a second too long, maybe, because Silas is on him, pushing him against the wall.

It hurts. His head knocks against plaster, hard, and his ears are still ringing when Silas grabs his crotch.

Jack wails.

Silas didn’t grab hard enough for the stitches to tear, Jack knows that intellectually, and he’s healing, he’s much much better, but it still feels like he’s just given birth all over again, raw and tender and every nerve on fire. When Silas’ arms press against his tender chest it’s a new, flaring pain, and his shirt is suddenly soaked with milk, and the entire world is pain and agony and fire.

“You will do as I say,” Silas hisses. “You will find David, and you will bring him to me. Is that clear?”

Jack nods weakly.

“I said,” Silas snarls, pressing harder, “is that clear?”

Jack’s face is wet with tears. Pain is radiating out towards his entire body from his crotch and chest and head. He can hear Merry sobbing from somewhere behind him, and that, more than anything else, prompts him to whimper, “Yes.”

Silas waits.

“Yes, Father,” Jack grinds out.

Silas lets go of Jack. Jack falls to the ground without the support, and every hurt is suddenly multiplied and bone-jarring.

Silas bends down to look at Jack. “Good. Now,” he smiles, and oh, Jack hates that smile, wily and smug and I-have-won-and-we-both-know-it, “I realize that your quarry is…quite tricky. I understand you might not find him quickly. That’s quite alright. But there is a war coming, and the people need their prince on their side.”

There’s blood in Jack’s throat. He chokes, and coughs, Merry’s cries ringing in his ears.

“A doctor will come by. I’d so hate to see you not being able to take care of my grandson, after all.” Silas kisses Jack’s head, almost gentle, and then he gets up and is gone, leaving Jack on the floor as Merry wails.

—

“Look at what a good baby you are,” Jack coos to Merry. “Look at how beautiful you are, you gorgeous thing. I love you so much.”

He’s become a person who coos. At his child.

(When he first realized what was happening to him, he cried, in private, in his bathroom away from Lucinda after the doctors and Silas went away.

He never allowed himself to want, but there was something in him, an ache. And of all the times and places for this to happen—

“I curse Your name,” Jack said to the sky outside the bars of the small window. “I don’t know if You exist, but if You do, I curse you. I curse You, and I curse Your fucking chosen king and his stupid fucking existence.”)

Merry blinks at Jack. He’s six weeks old, now, so much bigger already. The downy thatch of his hair is a distinct, fuzzy gold now. Silas had pursued his lips the last time he came into his room, and the entire time he held Merry, he made pointed insinuations while Jack clenched his fists so hard that his fingernails drew blood on his palms.

“But Silas is wrong, isn’t he? We both know that, Merry. David would never deign to f—touch me.” Jack kisses Merry’s stomach, cuddles him to his chest, and Merry—

Merry smiles at him.

It’s a real smile, his entire face moving, his tiny little baby eyes lighting up. Not the little mouth-movements he made before this, but an actual grin.

“Well hello there, baby,” Jack says, and kisses his forehead.

—

Jack sees Rose for the family portraits and interviews, of course, but she comes to see him in his rooms a grand total of once.

“I can make it easier,” she says carefully. “If you give me Merry—”

And it’s easy to think that maybe, maybe it’ll work. Rose cares for him. Rose isn’t like Silas.

Rose loves Jack. She doesn’t yet love Merry.

“No,” Jack says sharply. “No. You’re not going to take him away from me.”

“Silas isn’t going to stop hunting down David, Jack. You know that.” The way she says David’s name, Jack knows exactly what she means. “You can’t think you’ll escape, Jack. Running away to join whatever foolish rebellion he’s part of won’t work. You know it won’t.”

I’ll make sure of that, Jack translates. Rose loves Jack, but she loves—has always—loved Michelle more (everyone has always loved Michelle more, especially Da—no. Stop. Don’t). Whatever she can do to protect Michelle she will.

“If I need—” He stops. Takes a deep breath. Forces himself to unclench his fists. “I wasn’t planning on doing that.” (How can he go back to David? Everything him wants to, aches to—

But no. He painted himself into a corner, and now he’s got no choice.)

“Good.” Then Rose smiles at him, a split-second transformation. “Now, can I hold my grandson?”

Jack picks Merry up from where he’s lying in his cot and gives him to Rose with trembling hands. What else can he do?

—

“David won’t find you,” Silas says.

Silas has taken to coming to Jack’s rooms regularly. At least once a day, sometimes twice or thrice. He holds Merry and plays with him and acts like he loves him, like a grandfather. Like he’s not holding Merry hostage to ensure Jack’s good behavior.

It should be unbearable. If Jack was a better person, it would be unbearable. But Jack isn’t, and it’s not. So he stands there and doesn’t say anything and allows Silas to do his bullshit thing, because the truth is, he’s a coward.

“David won’t find you, or take you away, or help you escape,” Silas repeats.

“What makes you think any of those things will happen?” Jack affects nonchalance, raises an eyebrow. His heart is beating fast in his chest, so fast he feels like it might jump out, but he’s not going to show it.

Silas raises an eyebrow.

Ah. Rose.

Or—Silas has spies everywhere. Spies who spy on his spy, layer upon layer of betrayal. It’s not entirely improbable that he heard something somewhere.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” A denial would be easier, of course, but Jack has never specialized in easy. And he’s learning the lines and boundaries he used to know with Silas all over again.

Silas’ lip curls. “Don’t play coy with me. Although,” a curious tilt of his head, “I’m surprised you would hold out any hope of him rescuing you.”

His voice is heavy on the word rescuing, and Jack feels himself tremble. Play stupid. “I don’t understand.”

Silas flicks his wrist at Jack.  “He betrayed you just as much you betrayed me. But if you judge everyone by your own standards I suppose it’s understandable that you think he’ll forgive you.”

Jack forces himself to calmness. “You’re not going to provoke me.”

“I’m just making an observation.” Silas shrugs, artless and casual. “After all, here we are, carrying on a perfectly civil conversation even after you tried to usurp my throne. I doubt David is like you, though.”

Jack wants to lunge at Silas. Wants to punch his stupid fucking face and his stupid fucking mouth and beat him to a bloody pulp. How dare he say those things, how dare he—but that’s exactly what he’s looking for.

Worse, what he’s saying is the truth. It’s something that Jack understands, deep down in his bones. He won’t tell Silas, of course, won’t give him the pleasure of seeing his weakness. But. He knows.

“God’s favored ones don’t care who gets left behind when they walk on their righteous quests.” Silas isn’t getting angry at Jack’s non-responses, is just looking at him with those unsettling dark eyes, an expression on his face Jack would have called concern if he didn’t know him better than that.

“The way I see it,” Jack says, and he weighs his words with perhaps less care than he should, “God’s favor can only carry you so far.”

Silas smiles, as if he’s won a great victory.

Maybe he has. But Jack doesn’t give a single flying fuck. He’s won everything, anyway. What’s one more thing?

—

There’s an interview, Silas and Rose and Merry, somewhere out of the palace. Jack is very firmly Not Invited.

He tries to beg them to not take Merry, but Silas says, “You’ll need to learn to leave Merry behind when you start hunting that Shepherd boy.” There’s a look in his eyes Jack knows quite well. So that’s that.

Jack stares, instead, through the bars of his window at what little he can see of the world outside. He’s forgotten how to be alone, how to be without Merry, and the silence rings in his ears, the emptiness of his rooms sending prickles down his back.

There’s a full moon tonight, almost eclipsing the light of the stars. Jack hasn’t been outside, hasn’t felt a breeze on his face in so long. He wants—

The bars melt under his hands, and he almost falls.

He barely catches himself in time, sparks of pain shooting through his body.

The window is gone.

Not broken, not shattered, just gone. The bars and the glass and the brick around it, all vanished.

An orange-and-black monarch butterfly flutters outside.

Jack’s breath catches in his throat. This—

He can’t leave. He doesn’t want to leave, not this way, not without Merry. Shouldn’t leave.

But he feels his body move almost of his own accord, climbing through his window, sliding down the wall holding onto vines that he’s sure didn’t exist before. There are no guards anywhere, and the butterfly leads him on, out of the gates of the palace (here there are guards, but their eyes skip over him as if they haven’t seen him) and through the streets to a seedy hotel.

No-one looks at him. No-one notices his presence, though by all rights they should. Prince Jack, after all, is known throughout Gilboa. And, according Silas, there isn’t a citizen who knows his name who doesn’t also know that he’s been blessed with a child and is in seclusion.

Even as he thinks this, he walks, and the butterfly (out of season, out of time, everything and everywhere it shouldn’t be) leads him on, until he reaches a door, red paint flaking off it.

He knocks.

The door opens, and David Shepherd says, a radiant smile on his face, “Jack. I knew you’d come.”

—

David is—

Jack forgot how beautiful he was, and now he remembers, all over again, his stupidly pretty face and his perfect damn skin and glowing golden hair and cornflower blue eyes, and he has to remind himself to breathe. “David,” he says, and can’t say anymore.

I’m so sorry, and will you forgive me, and how could you do that to me you utter fucking bastard, how fucking dare you. A million thoughts run through Jack’s head, none of them things he can speak aloud, even if he could form coherent words.

David hugs Jack.

He’s warm and gentle and his embrace feels like benediction and forgiveness and a plea at once, and Jack wants to cry. He wants to hold him, and never let go.

“What—why are you here?” he asks, instead.

“I knew I needed to be here,” David says, and his smile is knowing and peaceful, and this is the exact kind of bullshit Jack remembers from Silas.

Except, the butterfly led Jack here. And yet. “It’s dangerous,” he hisses. And, suddenly reminded himself of his own position, he lets himself into the room and shuts the door. “Silas wants you dead. He wants me to kill you.”

“I know.” David shrugs. “It doesn’t matter. I have protection.”

Jack opens his mouth to argue, because that is the exact kind of idiotic thinking that’s going to lead him to get killed. What it matters Jack doesn’t know, because letting David die would solve a lot of his problems, but it does matter, to Jack at least.

David kisses him.

Jack has kissed a lot of people before, and truth be told, David doesn’t kiss amazingly well. But he’s gentle and sweet. The kind of thing Jack wouldn’t normally like, but there’s a hint of roughness in the way he grips Jack’s chin, the way he pushes his tongue inside Jack’s mouth.

Jack would like this to go on forever. But—

“Michelle,” he says, breaking the kiss. He knows he’s flushed and panting and already aroused, but this is the first time he’s had any kind of touch even approaching sexual in a long, long time, but. Focus. Jack. “You and Michelle.”

“Trust me,” David says.

And God help him, Jack does.

He’s the one who kisses David, this time, and it’s just as good as it was before, their bodies pushing against each other.

David’s hands are everywhere, tracing the lines of Jack’s body over his clothes (and Jack realizes with a start that he’s wearing faded, threadbare pants and an old t-shirt, nothing fit for company, but with David he somehow doesn’t mind). Every place David touches tingles with warmth and electricity. His cock is alert, now, and it still hurts, a little, but the bite of plain just adds to the pleasure of David’s crotch grinding against his.

He deepens the kiss, because he can, pulling David closer to him with a hand resting on the small of his back. David is sloppy with his tongue, over-enthusiastic, maybe, but eager and warm and there. Jack allows his eyes to flutter shut, allows himself to bask, for a moment.

When David breaks away, finally, he smiles at Jack, and it’s a wicked smile that has no place on a face so angelic.

“You’ve never done this before, have you?”

“I’ve had sex!” David protests, and the way his eyes flash indignantly is sweet, really.

“With a man,” Jack clarifies, and watches David blush. That’s a no, then. David is a virgin, and Jack—Jack is tempting him, corrupting him, as always, that core of perverseness that he can never quite shake. This is the curse God has given him, and how could He let Jack near David, let him affect David, too?

“Hey.” David lifts Jack’s chin up with a finger until they’re looking each other in the eye. “Jack. Wherever you went, come back. I want this. I’ve been dreaming of this for some time.”

And that…that thought makes Jack shudder, and in a more pleasant way. “You’ve been dreaming of this?”

“I touched myself,” David says, biting his lip (and oh that has to be on purpose, that flash of white teeth on red), “thinking of you. Of your body, the way you smile, your laugh. I’d imagine you kissing me, imagine what it’s like, imagining you taking my clothes off and touching me everywhere. I thought of you sucking me off, your lips around me.”

That—

Jack swallows. Looks away.

When he looks back, David is unbuttoning his shirt; his pants and boxers are on the floor.

And he’s gorgeous.

He’s muscled up even more, wiry but compact and strong, and his skin is taut over his abdomen and his arms. There’s a fine scattering of golden hair across his body, a trail leading down his chest—

Jack swallows again.

David’s hands are somehow on Jack, now that the shirt is off, pulling down Jack’s own pants and easing him out of his shirt, gentle and solicitous.

Jack doesn’t want gentle. David is so male, standing there in all his naked glory, his cock jutting out proudly and his body flat and muscled and bred for war, and that old hard feeling is pressing at his mind again, and he needs peace and quiet, he needs to not feel wrong and shamed and dirty.

He fairly throws himself at David, kisses him until David growls low in his throat. His hand comes to Jack’s cheek, pressing down and holding, and he walks them backwards to the bed.

The bed is creaky, the sheets a scratchy blood red (the better to hide stains with), but Jack hardly notices, because David is hovering over him, now, and his hips are pressing down on Jack. It hurts, that grind, his tender crotch feeling raw and abraded, but it’s the good kind of hurt, the kind that has him squirming and writhing and begging for more.

And David—

David kisses across his body. His hands are feather-light and tickling one moment, scratching nail-marks across the expanse of Jack’s skin the next. Jack hasn’t been out in so long that his skin is almost marble-white. The marks will show angry and red, in a pattern of David’s love.

“You look so good,” David whispers into Jack’s ear, almost tenderly. Then, as if some switch has been flipped, suddenly and calmly fierce, “You deserve this, don’t you?”

He slaps Jack’s face.

Really, if any other man who he had sex with did this, Jack would have called his guards. He has called his guards on people who’ve done this, more times than he can count, arrogant bastards who think they’ll get bragging rights by pushing the Prince around in bed. But there are no guards now, just Jack and David and God. God certainly isn’t going to help him, and after so long locked up, Jack is much weaker than David. David could crush him like a gnat without even thinking about it (Jack shivers; that’s a pleasant thought).

Besides, Jack likes it. Likes the sting of David’s palm, the way he mutters apologies into Jack’s ear as soon as he draws away.

But he hits Jack again, and again, and again, and Jack’s face must be red and swollen now, certainly feels it. There’s a red-hot iron of guilt and shame curdling in Jack’s stomach at the things David says to him before each slap, and it only adds to his arousal. His cock is stiff and hard and dripping, not even touched and already near the edge from David’s hand and the pain flaring across his face alone.

He writhes under David’s hand, and when the slaps change into soothing strokes he arches into that touch, too, because he wantsneed right now—

David’s forearm is pressing down across his chest, and it feels so good, the unexpected pressure on his chest, his tits, full of milk and aching, hanging heavy and almost painful, squashed with a weight that sends waves of pleasure across his body.

Jack gasps, and David looks down.

A slow smile spreads across his face, a sudden realization. “Do you need me to—” David pauses. Blushes deep crimson red, and it’s adorable. But Jack doesn’t want adorable right now. He wants someone to fuck him hard and deep, someone to make him forget his own name. He frowns at David.

David takes a deep breath. “Do you want me to suck on your tits?” He stumbles and stutters over tits, and maybe that makes it less hot, but Jack is still aroused so it’s fine.

He groans.

“Tell me,” David says, and oh, he’s ordering, now.

“Milk my tits,” Jack says, and he's flushing, he knows. “I need it. I need you to milk my tits, David, David.”

David looks at him. A heavy look, like he’s assessing all of Jack’s body. Jack shudders. “You’ve forgotten a word. The most important word.”

Jack can’t think, he’s so oversensitive and strung out and still—“Please,” he moans. “Please.” Silas would have a fit, him, here begging David to fuck him, to milk him like a girl, to commit more unnatural acts on his already-cursed body, such a fucking faggot, and it’s that thought as much as anything else that has him arching his chest up as much as he can, trying to get David to touch him, to give him some kind of relief, some measure of release.

“Are you sure?” And David’s smirking now, the bastard. Jack would punch him square in the face if not for the fact that he’s got Jack’s wrists trapped between one of his hands now, pressed down and pinned onto the bed so he can’t even move.

“Please,” Jack pants. “Please, David, if you have any kind of mercy—”

He cuts himself off with a choked cry as David swoops down and takes one of his—things, tits, oh God above his tits, into his mouth.

It’s nothing like nursing Merry.

He can feel the sweet relief of his milk suddenly flowing out, as if some dam has burst, the pressure inside him lessening, but David’s mouth is—

It’s seeking, engulfing, erotic, a wet tight suction that’s both clumsy and achingly tight all at once, and he might be crying, might be screaming. All he knows is that David is drawing the milk out of him, drinking from him, taking and taking and taking.

“Please,” Jack gasps again, “please.” He knows he’s thrusting his hips up into thin air, aching for some kind of touch on his cock, some kind of relief.

David releases Jack’s nipple, brushes a gentle kiss onto his mouth. Then he turns around.

Blinding hot pain as David squeezes, his entire groin aching and burning, and suddenly, he’s tumbling, down off the edge, soaring in pleasure, white spurts of his cum coating David’s hand.

When he comes to himself, David’s cock is nudging at his lips, and David is wiping the come off his hand on Jack’s face.

Jack takes David into his mouth almost without thinking.

He’s good at this, usually—he’s had practice—but the angle is all wrong. He has no leverage, no way to move, and all he can do is lie still and take it, take David’s cock in his mouth, filling him up.

He tries to lick, tries to provide suction, but David frowns at each attempt. Jack eventually gives up, covering his teeth with his lips and just letting David fuck him. Letting his hips slam down on Jack’s face, letting his cock fill up Jack’s mouth, letting him take and take his pleasure from Jack, letting him use Jack like some eager-to-please young slut, or maybe like the exact kind of person Jack knows he is, depraved and cursed and filthy.

David is speeding up, and now he’s got a fistful of Jack’s hair in his hand, tugging it with every thrust. He’s twisted himself somehow so he’s touching Jack again.

It’s not just the post-birth pain, now. He’s still tender and overstimulated, and his cock hardens and tries to draw away from David’s hand both at once. But David is relentless, still fucking Jack’s mouth and stroking Jack again and again, every movement a flash of red-hot pain that somehow translates in his fucked up mind to signals of pleasure.

“You can come from this again, can’t you?” There’s awe in David’s voice as he moves even faster. (Jack doesn’t understand how he’s maintaining the concentration and co-ordination he needs to both fuck Jack’s mouth and bring him off. But then, David has always been special.)

The pleasure in Jack’s gut is building, his cock painful but oh-so-sensitive, and then he comes again, and he feels David’s come fill his mouth almost in the same moment.

Then there are gentle lips kissing his forehead. “I forgive you,” David whispers. “Whatever you’ve done, whatever you’re going to do, I forgive you.” Jack hears it as if from far away, still floating in a blissful daze, and smiles.

—

David’s embrace is warm and solid and almost suffocating.

Merry is still with Silas and Rose, probably, but they’ll be back soon, and when they are—

Jack shudders. He doesn’t want to imagine what will happen if he’s not there. He knows, and won’t think about it.

“I need to go,” he tells David instead, pulling on his clothes, such as they are. He knows he’s mussed and disheveled and looks like he’s just had sex. Whatever the glamour was on him before, he hopes, will hold.

“Hmm?” David catches Jack’s wrist between his palms, a deceptively light grip.

“I need to go,” Jack repeats.

David sits up, still holding Jack’s hands. His hair is tousled and his cheeks still flushed, but his eyes are suddenly alert. “Jack. You know why you’re here.”

“Stay,” David says. He’s not pleading, Jack knows, from the steel in his voice. It’s a command. Somewhere, somehow, David has learned to rule.

But Jack has other commands and other claims to his heart. “Silas will never let me go.”

“How do you think you got out?” David is tracing patterns across Jack’s wrist, light touches that still send a shock of arousal through his body. But he can’t. “Silas won’t have a choice.”

Jack closes his eyes. Allows himself to imagine it, for a moment, him and David and Merry, on the run. “Does Michelle know you’re here?”

“I.” David stops. Takes a breath. “Jack—”

That’s all the answer Jack needs. “I have a son. I can’t leave him.” The memory of a crushing grip, deep, desperate pain.

“We’ll get him out,” David says, and he believes that, Jack knows. He has so much faith in the unending love of his God, of His benevolence and mercy.

“David.” Jack doesn’t want to break that faith. “Why do you think this happened tonight? While Merry wasn’t with me?”

There’s silence. This isn’t something David can deny. Then, “You’ll fight for Silas. Against me.” David’s eyes flash, and his voice is a little bit colder, now.

“I will fight for my son.” Jack wants to cry. He won’t cry. He made this choice, over and over again, and he’s going to keep making it. There’s no point in crying. “But David. I—” His voice breaks, and he has to stop, clear his throat. “David, I promise, I swear to you, I pledge myself to you. Always and forever. I’ll be yours.”

David’s eyes are glittering. “And I to you. I swear.”

“And,” Jack turns his wrist so he’s clasping David’s hand, skin to skin. “I’ll try to visit you. I’ll try.”  Jack might have always been the black sheep, but God loves David enough to give him everything he wants, after all. There is a bitterness to that thought that Jack holds onto. It’ll make it easier to carry out his father’s orders.

“You will visit me,” David says. Demands.

Jack can’t say anything to that. He bends and kisses David’s hand, lips brushing skin for a moment.

Then he makes himself let go, and turn around and walk away.

(His cheeks are wet with tears, but he’s sure only God will see that.

And right now, he thinks, God couldn’t give a fuck about Jack Benjamin.)