Chapter Text
He slips into his habits again, not that he’d ever properly fallen out of them. Izzy finds him one last time, drunk outside a club with music so loud Jack tries to read Izzy’s lips. Jack just laughs, hands on Izzy’s chest and slides him aside so he can get into the club.
Years pass. Moving from sofa to sofa. Living off of people he barely knows. Eventually they kick him out too.
Jack’s fingers are numb from the cold when he meets Lucius. He’s holding some shitty flier he found in a coffee shop, someone looking for a roommate. “Do you have a job?” Is the first thing Lucius asks.
Jack rubs the ends of his fingers. They’re starting to hurt. “Yeah, man. Course.” Some shit night job where he repaints hotel rooms. The money isn’t too bad. He works alone and no one tells him what to do. He gets off work and drinks until he passes out.
He doesn’t go out, not like he used to. He’s too tired. His body feels too heavy to do what he used to do. Now he just needs to get by. “Yeah, of course.” Lucius sighs.
“Anyone else respond?” Jack rubs his hands together and Lucius watches him close.
“No. They haven’t.” He sighs. “We’ll do a test run.”
“Fuck yeah, man.”
Lucius’ place is small. Just enough space for two people to live. The test run becomes months, they’re lives are just dancing around each other. Jack gets home early, covered in paint that he picks from underneath his nails. He gets out a beer can and hears his roommates alarm going off in the morning to get up. Art college or some shit.
Lucius steps out when Jack is in the fridge, he looks over the paint covering his features. “You’re supposed to get the paint on the walls, you know?” It’s really the first time they’ve talked since Jack had moved in. Besides the passing hellos and goodbyes.
“Good advice, kid.” Jack smirks, cracking open a beer.
“Little early, huh?” Lucius moves around Jack to start making his breakfast.
“For what?”
“A beer.” Lucius rolls his eyes.
“Late for me. Need something to get me to sleep.” Jack shrugs, like he needs advice from some hoity toity art kid.
“Sounds like a bad habit.”
Jack rolls his eyes, taps the top of the beer can. He knows the kid is right. There’s still that urge, the deep thirst. It only took a few to get him to sleep. How bad can that be? Lucius didn’t know how he used to drink. If he doesn’t drink, he can’t sleep. When he can’t sleep, he stares up at the ceiling and thinks and thinks and that crawling loneliness wraps around his lungs.
Three beers. That settled the ache in his chest.
Jack plays along though, and sets the beer on the counter. “What do you suggest then?”
Lucius looks at the clock on the stove. He hums. “I have some time.”
If Lucius thinks any less of Jack’s situation when they enter Jack’s room, he doesn’t say anything. Beer cans line the shelves like sad trophies. A blow up mattress covered in thin torn blankets was all Jack had.
He has Jack take his paint covered clothes off. Lucius only teases him lightly when Jack can’t get it up. Lucius is persistent, works at Jack for a moment longer before Jack sighs in relief. Feels himself hard in Lucius’ hand. “Lookie there,” Lucius hums around Jack’s dick, bobbing up and down with ease. He pops off and licks his lips. “Bet if you finished that beer, you wouldn’t have gotten it up at all.”
Jack shakes his head, closes his eyes and lays back on his shitty bed when Lucius rides him. Jack cums first, of course he does. He’s almost embarrassed, it's been awhile since anyone had touched him with something like kindness.
Lucius cums shortly after, and then is tossing the blankets over Jack. Jack is nearly asleep as Lucius gets redressed. “Let me know if you have any more trouble sleeping. Alright?”
He grunts in response.
It becomes a routine. Wake up, go to work, get home in the morning, he and Lucius would fuck and he’d fall asleep.
Lucius knew how to wear him out. Get him too tired to think of beer, however deep that urge is. The thirst that pulls at him still. It never goes away.
He cleans out his room. Buys a bed when the air mattress won’t blow up anymore. Lucius seems to appreciate an actual bed to fuck on.
Months go by and Jack falls into an easier routine. Get to work and start making breakfast for Lucius. Some mornings they don’t fuck, Lucius doesn’t have the time. Sends videos or photos from the night before. Things for Jack to stroke himself too.
He feels like a fucking idiot for getting too comfortable. Jack knows it’s over when one morning he rushes in to get the paint off his hands and Lucius is already at the table with someone else. Some guy named Pete. Pete kisses Lucius. “See you later, babe.” And leaves.
Jack realized that he and Lucius hadn’t kissed. Ever. It’s gone. It’s all gone.
“Pete is moving in…at the end of the month.”
“Right.” Jack grabs Pete’s plate from the table and takes it to the sink. “I just thought…” Jack’s voice is tight. Stupid. He’s stupid.
Lucius sounds amused for a moment, like Jack is joking. “Oh!” Then there’s that sadness. That pity he’s used to hearing. “Oh. Jack.”
“Don’t.” He doesn’t want to do this. “We never talked about it…I just got used to—” Us. The routine. Another thing that he would have taken away. “It’s stupid.”
“Jack,” Lucius stands up from the table. “You’re just not…relationship material.”
It stings. “Yeah. Yeah I know.” Fuck does it sting. He moves past Lucius. Goes to start to pack up his stuff. Stupid of him to get his hopes up.
He doesn’t say goodbye, can’t stomach it. Moves down the stairs of the apartment, his bag around his shoulder. Fleeing once more. And Jack does what he’s learned to do best, leave and not look back. Feel the loneliness wrap around his lungs again. Seek something familiar that will free him from that ache.
Jack had learned to live with not being first choice. He’d come to terms with this at the bottom of bottles again and again.
Now, he realizes as he gets into his shitty run down truck that smells like paint and rust, he has to come to terms with not being anyone's choice at all.