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Jack is awoken by Eric Cartman.
It’s really not ideal.
The room is dark, save for the television, which squawks with incessant, high-pitched voices throwing around antisemetic insults. Jack has no idea where he is.
“You finally awake?” says a voice in the dark. Jack starts.
This is how his headache makes itself known. And the nausea.
He attempts speech, though what he’s going to say is unbeknownst to him, and anyway his brain and mouth both seem to be in the process of rebooting. All that comes out is, “Hn?”
“I made some eggs.” And Jack finally places it, the voice, it’s Eric—no, not Cartman, Matthews. Eric Matthews. Which is much stranger than Eric Cartman, and that’s. That’s wrong, if Jack thinks about it. So, he won’t.
He sits up. Licks his lips. His voice comes out scratchy when he says, “Eric?”
“Yeah?”
Okay. “You’re—what are you doing here?” Because Eric’s been in Jack’s dreams before, but he’s pretty sure that’s not what this is. It’s way too dark, first of all. Jack knows Eric would insist on having the lights on. Or that’s how he imagines it, apparently.
Eric snorts. Jack’s eyes are adjusting, and he can see him now, in the pale light of the television. Stan Marsh reflected in his eyes, if Jack were close enough.
“What am I doing here?” Eric questions, voice light. “This is my apartment, dude.”
“Oh.” It actually doesn’t make any sense at all—Jack has to wonder if he’s a kidnapping victim and he’s been drugged. But the headache, you know, it’s really making it much too difficult to think about anything.
His stomach growls. So as it turns out he can think about food.
Then Eric is by his side, laughing, face obscured by the darkness but Jack can still see him, his dimples and floppy hair and white smile.
“Your food is getting cold, princess,” he says, rather unceremoniously depositing a plate in Jack’s lap. Jack accepts it, mostly out of surprise since he doesn’t trust Eric’s cooking on a good day.
Eric takes his post at the couch back up, and for a moment it’s quiet as he watches Jack eat, save for South Park. Now that his eyes have adjusted, Jack can see the CD cases, seasons one through five stacked up on the coffee table. It’s an ugly coffee table.
“Why’s it so dark?” Jack asks, only in part because he’s curious. He wants Eric to stop staring at him like he's seeing a ghost.
Eric shrugs. “I figured you wouldn’t take well to the light.”
“Huh?”
“‘Cause you’re a vampire, duh.” Eric shrugs again, smiling, though it looks a little strained. “The hangover was gonna be brutal, man, I could tell. I just thought I’d try and save you some of the discomfort.”
Jack freezes. He swallows an uncomfortably large hunk of scrambled egg. “The what?”
Eric’s face pulls downward, confused. “The… hangover?”
“Fuck.” Jack sets the plate down. “Shit. Fuck.” He feels sick to his stomach again.
“I didn’t realize you were drinking,” Eric says carefully, an obvious prompt to confide in him.
Jack snorts humorlessly. “Me neither.”
Eric says nothing, just stares. Jack knows what happened, now. He doesn’t want to tell Eric, or anyone, anything.
“Rachel and I broke up,” he says instead, because at least that’s a truth he can find it in himself to tell. Because it had been a long time coming, and because, for whatever reason, he feels like Eric deserves to know. But mostly, probably, because it’s a distraction from the impending conversation he doesn’t want to have.
“Yeah, I kinda got that,” Eric replies. “I’m sorry, man.”
He doesn’t ask about Rachel’s availability. Jack feels blindsided by the absence of this comment he was so thoroughly expecting. Had been expecting for weeks.
“It’s—fine,” he manages. “It’s for the better.”
And Eric just watches him. Jack watches him back.
~
“You don’t have work or anything?” Jack asks, and by then the shades are open and he’s sitting on a barstool, nursing a cup of coffee along with the hangover. It’s better, though, with the Tylenol Eric already had sitting out on the counter.
Eric cocks his head. “It’s Sunday.”
“Oh. Yeah.” He knew that.
Eric is meticulously peeling an orange, and it’s sort of infuriating to watch. Jack hates oranges.
“So,” Eric says.
Jack looks up at his face.
He keeps his eyes trained on the orange. “Why did you show up at my apartment blacked out last night?” Eric has the right to ask him this. More than, really. Jack had still been hoping he wouldn’t, and feels baselessly betrayed by its posing.
He doesn’t want to be a jerk, though. He’d promised himself he wouldn’t be a jerk.
When he shrugs he tries to be nonchalant about it, but he’s certain his every movement looks jerky and forced. “I just needed someplace to stay. I’m really sorry to crash in on you like this. You know you didn’t have to—”
“Uhp bup!” Eric raises his hand dramatically for silence. “None of that shit, man. You know you’re welcome anytime, anywhere, as long as I’m there.” He goes back to the orange, and Jack recognizes that he’s avoiding completely engaging with the conversation. Nervousness. “Why were you drinking?” Eric asks, voice softer. “And, also, since when the fuck have you been back in the States?”
Two questions he doesn’t want to answer. He’s ashamed, mostly.
“I haven’t been drinking, like, as a habit. I swear.”
Eric catches his gaze, and he looks like he believes him.
“But?”
Jack sighs. “I dunno. I was just having a rough night, I guess.” Which is actually true.
Eric stops peeling the stupid orange. He looks put out, a bit, or maybe just worried. “I know I’m the last person you need telling you this, but be careful. Don’t give me a reason to worry about you.”
“You don’t worry about me?” Jack says. He pouts.
Eric snorts. “You worry about everything, all the time. There’s only so much worry that can go around, you know.”
Eric has always been way too wise. He is the balance in life Jack never had.
“But, you know.” Eric gesticulates randomly. “I might have to worry about you for a change. And then the world will really fall on its head.”
Jack laughs, maybe a little too soft and fond, but it feels nice. It feels nice to come face to face with the reality he had been dreading so long, dreading it because he was sure it wasn’t like he imagined, sure it wasn’t real.
And if it was real, what would he do with it? What he had always done before? Look where that had landed him.
The reality being, of course, what it had always been. The reality that Eric still knows him, still cares for him. Still wants him around after everything Jack’s done, all the mistakes and fuck ups he’s made, especially where Eric is concerned.
None of it seems to matter now, when Eric is grinning at him, his eyes sparkling like a view one can find only at the precipice of tangibility. So Jack laughs, soft and fond and all the other sissy adjectives he doesn’t care about right now.
~
Eric suggests going out, but Jack, who has spent the majority of the past year in the warm embrace of Africa, is not feeling up to braving the November winds, even in his home city. He had braved it plenty last night, even if he was inebriated for most of it.
They end up watching the news like an old couple.
He really shouldn’t think of it that way.
“Do you think they’ll bomb Iraq?”
“I have no idea.”
“Yeah. Let’s watch South Park.”
Which is better. Dudes watch South Park together all the time.
Eric doesn’t ask about all the things Jack is certain he wants to, though he does look distracted, even watching his favorite show. Jack knows Eric wants to ask why he’d been drinking, because he never really answered that question. He must want to know how long Jack has been back, and what he’s been doing, and why he’d shown up at Eric’s apartment at fuckall in the morning when he could have gone to Shawn’s or his parents’ or found a hotel.
Of course, there are a multitude of things Jack wants to ask Eric, too. He thinks he’s afraid of the answers he’ll get.
For better or for worse, he’s comfortable in this strange little existence they seem to be carving out once again, one where they coexist in close quarters and eat together and watch terrible TV side by side on a shitty couch. As if nothing has changed. Nothing is different between them than when Eric didn’t know how to do laundry and Jack was in a new city, on his own for the first time. And then, suddenly, inexplicably, not on his own.
It occurs to him that he has no idea if Eric’s favorite movie is still The Godfather Part II, or if his favorite color is still blue, or if he still stays away from cigarettes. This comes with the painful reminder that, despite all of Jack’s wishes, things are different.
He can remember a hundred nights spent on a couch just like this, in front of a TV remarkably similar, safe under the cover of darkness. Sitting in each other’s company, when that was enough, or shoulder to shoulder, knee to knee, someone’s head on someone’s chest. Or something else, something even closer, whenever Eric had too much to drink and Jack was too tired to hate himself.
This is usually what he dreams about, these days.
And in their past intimacy is all the forbidden things he wants to ask. He will waste away at Eric’s side because Jack has resolved that Eric can never, ever know what it all meant to him.
Eric is looking at him again. Jack intends to keep his eyes on the television, but he glances over despite himself. He feels naked under Eric’s gaze, like Eric is looking into him and seeing all his inner anguish over something that really, probably isn’t that big of a deal.
Jack needs to break the silence or he will implode under Eric’s stare.
So, “How’s Cory?” A safe question. Something that doesn’t really have to do with either of them.
“He’s good. Him and Topanga, you know.”
“And Shawn?” Jack asks, before he can realize how that sounds.
Apparently it sounds just as bad as he suspected, because Eric’s eyes practically bug out of his skull. “You mean you haven’t been in touch with him?”
Which forces another truth out of Jack. Which is that, “No, we—I guess not.”
Eric looks at him for a second longer before he leans back against the couch, his expression betraying nothing. He’s got his guard up, and Jack doesn’t blame him, really.
“Shawn’s good,” he says, after a moment, while Kyle shouts “you bastard!” onscreen. Jack regrets that maybe Eric is more of a brother to Shawn than Jack will ever be.
~
He sleeps on the couch, which is not so bad.
Jack used to sleep on the couch, sometimes, when Eric had company over. Oftentimes he’d kick Eric and his female friend into the living room, but other times it was too late and Jack had no choice but to endure the couch or else subject his dignity to things he’d rather not. And despite his attempts, it was always impossible not to hear them.
He’d never really given his sexuality much thought, before Eric. Admittedly, he is not and has never been the most introspective of people. But it still feels like something special to him once in a while, when he lets it.
~
In the morning, Eric asks him over a bowl of cereal, “Are you gay, Jack?”
Which Jack was not expecting, does not know what to make of, and least of all does he have any idea how to respond.
He sits frozen in place for several seconds, staring at Eric with eyes he knows are wide and caught. Eric does not yield. Jack wonders if he’s being fucked with. Eric looks very serious.
“I—” Jack swallows. His heart is beating far faster than it has any right to. “No? I mean—no, I’m not. I’m not gay.”
Eric just hums, and Jack’s not sure exactly what significance it holds, if any. Then Eric says, “Well, I’m bisexual. Just so you know.”
What. What. “Oh. Okay. Cool.”
Something like indecision passes over Eric’s face as he hesitates for a moment, his eyes on Jack. Then he leans across the table and brushes his lips to the shell of Jack’s ear, so quick, so soft, it’s barely a nudge. Jack is startled into complete stillness.
“I’m off to work,” Eric announces, and he’s gone.
What.
~
Eric gets home, and Jack’s on him.
He doesn’t know when he made the decision to do this, if he ever did. He does know this is what he’s wanted, this is what feels good and better than anything else he’s ever done in his entire life. He doesn’t care about success or his stepfather or upholding the status-quo. He cares about Eric, standing in the doorway with his coat halfway off, groaning into Jack’s mouth.
Eric’s quick on the uptake, too. He doesn’t ask questions but he does shed his coat, and reaches down to slip off his shoes, which are laced in a way so that he doesn’t actually have to tie them, of course they are.
Jack grabs his face and tries his best to kiss all the breath out of him, all the stupid things he might say.
And then Eric pushes back, grabs Jack’s biceps and gently twists away from him, and all the confidence dies like a doused fire.
“You’re drunk?” Erics says breathily, not really a question. He’s flushed and panting, a goddamn pompom hat still adorning his head.
Jack stops. “What?” He shakes his head. “No.”
Eric deflates a little bit in what is evidently relief. “Oh.”
“Why would you think that?”
Eric holds his palms out. “When you—Saturday night. Or Sunday morning, I guess. You came onto me like crazy, dude.”
“Shit, I did?” Jack says stupidly.
Eric laughs. “Yeah, man. I guess you don’t remember.”
Jack looks at his feet. “Sorry.”
“It’s—err, probably for the best.” Suddenly Eric’s hand is on his jaw, guiding his gaze upwards. “Hey, it’s fine, okay? Whatever.”
He doesn’t understand. How could he? Jack never told him. Promised he’d never tell him.
Eric continues before Jack can even begin to think of the right thing to say. “I mean, it’s not whatever. For me. Just—so you know. But if you’re… straight or something, it doesn’t have to mean anything, I guess.”
And Jack is selfish and perhaps he does it all to protect himself more than anything. But pushing Eric away has never made him happy, and it’s never stopped him from being damaged.
“I don’t want to be a faggot,” he admits.
Eric exhales, and he looks sad, and a little exasperated. “Jackie, no one is a faggot. Even if they’re gay.”
Jack casts his eyes down again, because Eric looks so sincere. “Something terrible will happen,” Jack tells him.
Eric leans in a little closer, and Jack lets him kiss him, just once.
“C’mon, it’s the 21st century, dude.”
He’s right, of course. It’s a new century, the towers are gone, and Jack… is gay.
It’s not like he’s going to say it out loud or something. But he nods, once, and watches Eric smile.
In a moment of boldness, he tells him, “That was why I came here, yesterday.”
“Because you’re gay?” Eric says.
He makes a face. “No, idiot, because—because I… came for you. I came back to the US and I—I wish I was drunk right now.” He slumps forward, and Eric embraces him.
“No, no you don’t. Because you want to be here with me, don’t you, all the way here.”
“Yeah,” Jack agrees, and Eric’s chest is a perfect place for his head. “I do.”
~
They don’t even make it to the couch, let alone the bed. At least the kitchenette is pretty nice, even for Jack’s standards.
Jack and Eric had sex at their apartment kitchenette once, on Shawn’s birthday, of all things. Jack had cried, after, and Eric had passed out drunk on the floor.
He’s fairly confident neither of those things are going to happen this time.
Eric gropes him all over, pressing him against the sharp edge of the counter but Jack doesn’t even care, not as long as he gets to keep touching Eric’s face.
“You came back for me,” Eric breathes against his jaw.
“Yeah,” Jack whines embarrassingly. “I did, I did.” Because it’s true. He left Rachel and he flew back to America and he got drunk for the first time in years because he came back for Eric, and he was so sure Eric would hate him, send him away, or worse, all the college flings would turn out to have been just experimentation at Jack’s expense.
Eric kisses the edge of his jaw, the hollow of his throat. “It was never about any girl,” he confesses. “It was always about you, Jackie.”
Jack means to respond verbally, maybe say something that will stop his heart from soaring treacherously high, but then Eric grabs at the front of his pants and he can’t do anything but moan, already so far gone when they’ve barely even begun.
“So needy,” Eric murmurs, and catches his lips again.
Jack fumbles for Eric’s belt, wanting nothing more in that moment than to touch him, make him see stars like Jack does every time he looks at him. Eric makes it near impossible, rutting in his jeans against Jack’s thigh. His knee is between Jack’s legs and Jack is finding it difficult to resist grinding down, dry humping to jizz in their pants like two teenagers.
“C’mon,” he mumbles into Eric’s mouth. “Just lemme—”
“Sorry, sorry,” Eric says, stilling just enough for Jack to get his fly unzipped. He then attacks Jack’s neck with new vigor, and Jack can do nothing but tilt his head back and ride the sensations flooding through him.
“You okay?” Eric asks.
Jack nods, adamant. “I’m good. Keep going, I’m good.”
And the next thing he knows Eric’s mouth is gone, Eric is gone, Eric is on the floor, kneeling. Oh, God.
“You done this before?” Jack asks him incredulously.
Eric just shrugs. Jack imagines him, on his knees for some other, faceless guy. In a pang of possessiveness, he laces his fingers through the soft strands of Eric’s hair and jerks his face forward, to where the front of his pants is sporting a noticeable bulge.
“Fuck,” Eric pants, hands coming up to undo Jack’s fly. He shucks Jack’s jeans and boxers all in one go. “You’re crazy.”
“You’re the crazy one,” Jack quips, making a fist with the hand in Eric’s hair, refusing to be self conscious about his nakedness.
Eric grins. “Make me crazy.” And he bites at the inside of Jack's thigh, at the soft flesh there that Jack is certain no one, not even Eric, has ever paid much attention to before.
“Ah, c’mon, Eric, don’t tease.”
“Patience, young padawan.”
“No. That is the least sexy thing you could say right now.”
“Sexy is in the ear of the beholder.”
“We can discuss your Star Wars fetish another time. Just touch me,” Jack orders.
Eric looks immensely fucking pleased with himself as he licks, licks up Jack’s thighs and bites, and kisses it better, his hands kneading Jack’s ass the whole time, and the whole thing is entirely too sensational when his dick hasn’t even been touched yet. He doesn’t want to think about where Eric learned this shit.
Eric’s mouth travels up.
First too high, to his navel, and then down, and finally his mouth is around the head of Jack’s dick. It’s a perfect wet heat that spreads around him, making him moan and buck even as Eric holds his hips down, bobs back and forth and Jack is not going to last.
He hasn’t really gotten any in a while. Rachel, he’s pretty sure, knew about everything.
Eric pulls away to mouth around the base of Jack’s dick, pressing wet, open-mouthed kisses there, his hands traveling from Jack’s hip bones back around to his ass.
“Eric, fuck, fuck, c’mon, make me come, please, c’mon,” he babbles, and he’s usually not so talkative but really, have mercy.
One of Eric’s hands moves from his ass to his dick. He drags his thumb over the head before he wraps his hand around the base of his cock and pumps, one two three.
“Come on, come for me,” Eric says, and then he wraps his mouth around the head of Jack’s dick again, and his tongue can do incredible things, it really can, and Jack comes loudly, unglamorous.
“Hot, God, fuck,” he hears, before Eric is there at his face again. He lets Eric kiss him without much effort on his part, fuzzy and floaty and for once not a care in the world.
Eric, by contrast, is restless, traveling from Jack’s lips to his neck to his jaw, the side of his face, his goddamn earlobe. Jack isn’t as desperate now, but seeing, feeling Eric so worked up has him wanting to feel all of him, unobstructed. He’s regained some motor skill by then and he tugs listlessly at the bottom hem of Eric’s shirt, hoping Eric isn’t too single-minded in that moment to ignore it.
Luckily, Eric’s one track mind seems to agree that skin on skin sounds like a grand plan. He pulls back just enough to tear his shirt over his head, and then he goes for Jack’s too.
Jack lifts his arms and helps Eric undress him, reveling in the soft but insistent brush of his knuckles against his bare chest, his biceps, and next the much more needy hands on his shoulders, his waist, his hips.
Jack laughs into Eric’s mouth. “Needa get you off, man.”
Eric gives an affirmative grunt. Still, he leans down to Jack’s newly exposed collarbones, pressing his lips there, nipping at the delicate skin. Jack makes an embarrassing noise and gets his hand in Eric’s hair.
He realizes Eric is a very dangerous force when he’s horny and not wasted. Eric had always been, to be honest, a selfish lover whenever Jack had been with him. It had struck him as uncharacteristic, but Jack himself is also not always what people are expecting in bed, and he hadn’t really minded either way.
Now, when Eric is sober, when Eric knows, probably, how Jack feels, it's almost as if—as if Eric wants to worship him, or something.
Jack is selfish to protect himself. Maybe, sometimes, Eric is the same.
“I have an idea,” Eric tells him, straightening back up, and Jack barely hums an affirmative before he’s being spun around to face the countertop.
Oh, um. “Wait—” he says, bracing his hands on the laminate surface, because he may be gay but he’s not really sure he wants to be sodomized. Even by Eric. And definitely not in this position. He’s somewhat of a romantic bastard about these things, sue him.
Eric leans over him, breath hitting warm against his ear. “I wanna fuck your thighs. Can I?”
“Oh.” He gives it a second’s thought and decides he doesn’t give a fuck if this position in humiliating or not because Eric can definitely, definitely fuck his thighs and Jack thinks he might enjoy it very much. “Yeah,” he agrees. “Yeah, do it.”
Eric makes a noise like a growl and cups Jack’s ass. Jack closes his eyes, only feeling as Eric leans forward and plasters his front to Jack’s back, sweat and skin melding like they were meant to be together like this, all this time.
Jack is getting hard again.
Eric's hands run light up and down Jack’s sides, and then he’s pulling away. Jack can’t see what’s happening, whines at the loss of heat. He only knows what’s to come when he feels Eric’s mouth again. Eric apparently can’t help himself from putting his lips on Jack’s thighs, though this time it’s the backs of them, and his tongue in the cleft of Jack’s ass, his teeth in the fleshy part just above the thigh.
It feels better than it should, Jack thinks. It might not even entirely be the physical sensation, but partly the connotations of it, the implications in the fact that Eric is willing to do this, seems to enjoy it. The significance in the idea that Eric wants nothing more than to be on his knees, tasting Jack’s skin, maybe marking him up every now and then.
Eric bites him with a particular fierceness at the very top of his thigh, and Jack yelps.
“I’m gonna have to wear pants to the gym for a week,” Jack tells him, trying to be contemptful about it.
“Hopefully more,” Eric replies. “Or don’t go to the gym. Stay here with me all the time. You’re perfect, you know.”
Jack laughs, but he can feel himself going red. “Don’t you have work? And, like responsibilities?”
“Responsibilities-schomsibilites,” Eric retorts, and sucks at the inside of Jack’s knee, a strangely pleasurable feeling. He’s not going to be able to wear shorts forever, but he wants Eric to do whatever he wants to do with him, and he doesn’t care.
He hears Eric shift, and there he is against his back again, still a human furnace for all eternity.
“You have the best legs,” Eric tells him, so close to his ear. Jack leans his head back, lets his eyes slip closed. “Wanna fuck them so bad.”
“Do it,” Jack says, at the edge of coherency.
He has his wits about him enough to shift his stance so that his legs are closed. Eric’s work with his tongue wasn’t for nothing, because when he slips his hand between Jack’s thighs, it’s an easy slide. Still, Jack hears him spit, feels the slick palm that positions itself next to the other one.
“Gonna do it, okay?” Eric says.
Jack nods. “Yeah, yeah.”
He’s just slightly too short for their current position to work, so Eric’s hands hoist him up by his waist so that Jack is leaning bodily on the counter, his ass is the air. Eric moans when his cock finally slides into place, and Jack is right there with him. It feels incredibly sexual, even though they’re not really fucking.
“You’re so tight,” Eric says, like he’s fucking Jack anyway. “Wanted it so bad, Jackie, wanted you.”
Jack moans and grinds back, his ass hitting Eric’s abdomen with each thrust. The head of Eric’s dick rubs against his balls every time he thrusts forward, and Jack thinks he will never get enough of the sounds Eric is making, the broken groans interspersed with the short gasps the impact of their bodies is pushing out of Jack.
He feels like he needs to get off, but he’s certain that if he eliminates the support his arms are providing him he’ll go face first into the counter. Eric must read his mind, must just know what he needs, Jack thinks deliriously, when his hand reaches around and pumps him in time with Eric’s thrusts.
It’s fast and full of friction, and both of them were already near the edge. Eric comes first, Jack can tell it’s coming as the hand on him goes limp and Eric’s thrusts become stilted and paceless. He sinks his teeth into the back of Jack’s neck and lets loose a drawn out groan, painting Jack’s ass and the backs of his thighs with warm, sticky wetness.
He sits there for a few moments before he seems to regain himself. Then he’s plastered against Jack’s side, getting him off in fast strokes and kissing him, ardent but unrushed. Jack is sure he’ll wake the neighbors with how he moans when he comes for the second time that night.
He’s never had sex like this, ever.
He wonders what kinds of things Eric could do on a bed.
“Was it good?” Eric asks, his words flooding into Jack’s mind slowly.
Jack nods, leans into Eric’s shoulder, kisses his neck without much intent other than closeness.
Eric’s laugh is close and far away. “That’s good.”
Something cold and wet touches the back of Jack’s thighs, and it takes him a moment to realize it’s a wad of paper towel. He doesn’t know when or where Eric got it, but Jack lets him clean them up before Eric's hand is on the small of his back and he’s leading Jack to the bed.
He lets Eric spoon him, lets him kiss his hair, and when Jack finds Eric’s hand and intertwines their fingers, Eric doesn’t pull away.
~
“You know something,” Shawn says, over coffee in a hideous café, “I think I always knew you weren’t into girls. And I definitely knew you were into Eric.”
“Oh, fuck off.”