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Some days, John finds he has no idea how to love Caine.
It’s not that John doesn’t care to love him, no, John falls a little more each day when he wakes up to Caine— to his sleep-tousled hair; daylight catching and nesting in those inky blacks, lighting the highs of his cheekbones, dusting the tip of his nose.
Caine would murmur when he stirred, and warmth would curl in John’s belly, hesitant, before his brain kicks itself into motion and John remembers that he has no need to be. Not anymore. The warmth starts to unfurl itself, and John thinks that if he might know how to love at all, then loving Caine is easy.
The problem is that John doesn’t know; if he even knows how to love anymore.
Caine tends to be more agreeable in the mornings— it's the first important piece of information that one trying to love Caine probably needs to know.
“I’ve been thinking,” John starts, when sunlight filters in from the gaps between the curtains. Caine’s eyes remain defiantly tapered shut, but he shifts in John’s arms. When are you not, he seems to say, and John takes that as his cue to continue. “What do you say to a change of scenery?”
“Where are you thinking?” Caine finally deigns to ask, slow and easy and yawning as he does.
“Paris,” John says, like the mere mention of the place isn’t a land mine, like Caine’s eyes don’t narrow and curtness doesn’t lace his voice every time Paris is brought up in conversation. Like what John expects, Caine is immediately awake, blinking his eyes open; but what John looks for is the slight tipping of his chin.
“Several near-death experiences and you haven’t developed an aversion to the place,” Caine comments, almost cautiously. He shifts again, arching the small of his back, his chin coming to a rest on the curve of John’s neck. John tucks him just that bit tighter, breathes in the smell of Caine and sun-warmed sheets. It smells oddly like home; or how a home should smell like, if John might know anything at all about having a home.
(John used to have a home with Helen, right here in New York. It smelled of daisies and looked like it was dipped in liquid gold. It doesn’t seem to work that way anymore, not with Caine)
The silence stretches on.
Caine’s waiting for him to elaborate, John realizes. “It’s where Mia is,” John reasons, deliberately avoiding Caine’s qualms about his near-death experiences; he’s had one of those in all seven continents, after all. Caine disentangles himself from John, sheets pooling around his waist as he sits, his skin glazed bronze from all the time they’ve spent on the beaches of New York. He’s a sight, and John wishes not for the first time, that Caine can see himself the way John does.
“Okay,” Caine agrees, voice dashed with hesitance. “Just so you know, I’ll never forgive you if you die on me,” Caine continues, unwilling to let the sentiment go as he brandishes his cane— having retrieved it over from his side of the bed—, threateningly at John.
“I’ll keep that in mind the next time we’re being chased by ducks in the park,” John says, laughing, pushing aside the offending weapon to take Caine’s arm. “Breakfast?”
“Finally. Thought you’d never ask,” Caine huffs, allowing John to help him up. John pulls him greedily into a kiss. It might be a little unbecoming, a little desperate, but John needs it sometimes— the reminder that what he has with Caine right now is real. Caine laughs breathily and saunters off expertly as soon as John runs out of air. And if Caine has picked up on the fact that John makes it a point to help every morning— Caine hates being helped or humored, something about being treated like an invalid, which John thinks is stupid, but wisely keeps his mouth shut about— he doesn’t call John out on it.
(These days, being with Caine smells like a mix of cologne and sun-warmed sheets. It looks the same way it always has, a dark alleyway dripped with neon and graffiti. These days, the smell of blood and rust doesn't linger, and the meaningless words and tasteless slurs have started to strip and peel away)
Another thing about Caine that John, specifically, needs to remember, is that Caine is different from how he used to be. They are different, from how they used to be.
It’s just sex. John tells himself repeatedly, emotions crackling like live wire underneath his skin when Caine is below him, writhing and moaning. The next immediate thought that comes to John’s mind is— he doesn’t get to feel this way— he doesn’t get to feel so— alive.
It’s just sex. John tells himself, grateful, for once, that Caine can’t see the jumble of feelings tumbling across his face when he’s on top of him, wearing that smug, self-satisfied look of his. It feels like death by a thousand cuts, like John is cutting himself open, chopping up what’s left of his heart for the things that he’s not supposed to have.
It’s just sex. John has to remind himself, nails digging deep into his palms when Caine is on his knees in front of him, creases around the corners of his eyes, a grin splitting his face— because Caine doesn’t mean to be soft. Caine doesn’t mean, to be anything other than filthy. He doesn’t want anything, except to reduce John to a heated, wanting mess— and he only asks for the same things in return.
But Caine stays in bed, after, smiles that too-sweet smile of his, buries himself under their blanket and way too many pillows, and John remembers it then— that that’s not all what Caine wants.
John remembers that he can have this now, that what they have is more than just sex; maybe it always has been, but they’ve only just started to own it.
“Breakfast in bed?” John’d asked on a whim.
“Please,” Caine’d said, eyes twinkling, and John remembers again, that a deceptively sweet Caine tends to get his way.
John can’t quite bring himself to mind.
Some days are not most days. The fact that breakfast in bed without housekeeping at their beck and call being a terror in its aftermath might have something to do with that.
John gets Caine to the kitchen counter, then gets himself behind it. He lays half a loaf of sourdough atop, wipes down the knife he’s taken out from the drawer, and pretends he doesn’t notice the way Caine perks up with interest.
Caine visibly deflates when John starts slicing the loaf, leaning his cheek on the back of his fingers and listening to the telltale sounds of bread being cut. When John plates it, Caine smiles at the clinking of plates and cutlery, and then at the sizzling sounds from the knob of butter melting in the heated pan.
“You should let me feed you for a change,” Caine says offhandedly when the scrambled eggs have thickened and John is in the midst of plating them.
A smile tugs on John’s lips at Caine’s offer— sure, Caine knows how to cook, John will give him that, but Caine also cooks for survival, and it's not something he particularly enjoys. John is about to decline for both of their sakes when he catches the soft smile painting Caine’s face. And it hits him that Caine is also trying to navigate the boundaries of their new relationship the same way John is— John imagines Caine would scoff and say that’s kind of the idea, after all.
“Okay,” John says, as he sets their food down and takes a seat next to Caine.
“Okay,” Caine repeats, a too big grin on his face.
John tries not to flinch.
Some days, John thinks that maybe even someone like Caine needs to work out how to love him, if Caine might even want something like that at all.
Caine watches him every now and then, wearing an unassuming look on his face as he does, his ears sharp and sensitive, his head tilting minutely at any heavy sound or touch.
It’s different, for obvious reasons, from the way Caine used to watch him, but John still finds comfort in the familiar sensations of being the center of Caine’s focus. It wraps like a worn coat around his shoulders, like Caine’s making up for the things he doesn’t yet know— like Caine’s piecing together all those parts of John, both new and old, understanding what John’s been, and what John is.
“I got this,” Caine says, a flurry of movement by the side, on a day that John doesn’t want to get out of bed.
“What have you got?” John asks curiously, unable to help himself.
“Oh you know,” Caine says with a shrug, wrestling with a white sweatshirt, “picking up groceries, getting us takeout, leaving you alone with your thoughts?”
John stares at Caine, feels his chest constrict. He forgets how to breathe.
“John?” Caine asks, frowning, sweatshirt momentarily forgotten.
It gets overwhelming, sometimes, the way Caine sees him. The way Caine truly, truly sees him, and the treacherous thought that Caine might also want to love him festers.
“Caine. I— well. Thank you.”
John sucks in some air, tries to ignore the way his chest feels like it’s cracking. Caine has always seen him, it’s just— easier to show him, John places, when they’re both being painfully honest.
“Don’t get used to it,” Caine says, lips curved playfully. John smiles back at Caine. It’s raw and painful and honest. This time, John wishes Caine could see all of it.
The crack around his chest spreads just that bit wider.
Some days, realization sneaks up on him out of nowhere.
They reach Paris with a single compact luggage between them. It’s jostled around, because Caine gets bored of pushing it after an alarmingly short amount of time, and John continues to try and make him, just to maintain the fairness of their arrangement.
The streets of Rue Saint Denis are charming and cozy, but the seedy underbelly that has withstood the test of time and gentrification clings to her still.
It’s compelling, John muses, the way history is flowing, rich and nostalgic, through the winding paths, through where their shoes eat the pavement. It’s an almost titillating thought, that Caine’s picked these streets for the very same reasons, that Caine might feel the thrum of nostalgia the same way John does, potent and burning and deep.
A firm squeeze distracts him. John looks down to find Caine’s hand in his, their fingers intertwined. When John looks back up, Caine’s looking at him, concerned. He must have spaced out for too long. Something blooms, sharp and stinging, in John’s chest. It rises all the way up the back of his throat. In this instance, looking might be a form of figurative speech, but Caine’s always been the more expressive one— and right now he’s wearing concern like it’s fashionable; from the tilt of his head, all the way to the downward curve of his lips.
It takes John’s breath away, in a different way his breath is taken away when they’re fighting, or when they’re wrestling for dominance in bed. Then John recalls their journey to Paris, and he remembers that it’s the same way his breath is taken away when Caine is slumped against him, head on his shoulder. It’s the same way when he wakes to Caine in the mornings, when their lovemaking is soft, when Caine cards his fingers through his hair, when Caine sees him and then shows him how much he does.
“John?”
“I love you,” John blurts, the feeling bubbling in his chest finally slipping free. John loves Caine, he probably always had, in several different ways, during several different times, and love is love whichever way he knows it. It doesn’t have to be shaped in a certain way to fit into the bucket.
“Yeah?” Caine questions, smiling. “Took you long enough. It’s rude to keep a guy waiting.”
And that— that, doesn’t make sense. What had Caine been waiting for?
“For you to say you love me, what else?” Caine replies.
John hadn’t realized he had said that out loud.
“I didn’t know that you were waiting,” John says.
“You were too occupied trying to sort it out,” Caine says, like he knows it for a fact. “I love you, John.” Caine declares, almost tender, and all at once it’s too much. John places his hands around Caine’s waist, pulls him flush, and tells him again that he loves him the best way he knows how.
Their luggage starts to roll down the side path, startling several passersby in its wake.
Caine’s still an asshole.
John still can’t quite bring himself to mind.
Some days, things just slot into place.
“What do you think?” John asks as he creaks open the gate, glances at Caine, and kicks himself when he considers that the question might have been a bit premature.
Caine raises his brows. They’re barely visible past his shades. “If it’s good enough for you, then it’s good enough for me,” he says with a shrug. Brushing past John, Caine starts to scope the area, cane tapping occasionally around the corners and edges.
The apartment is a quaint townhouse that opens with an outdoor terrace where John imagines Caine would like to spend his mornings and nights.
Caine feels around the table and chairs, takes a seat, and then as if on cue, spreads his arms and says, “I like it.”
“You haven’t seen the inside yet,” John points out.
Caine brushes him off, says he doesn’t need to, and lights a cigarette.
Some days, John is reminded that he doesn't need to anticipate it all. The hefty consequences of thinking with his heart may have left him scarred, but Caine himself is his own reminder that he's able to look after himself just fine. John is reminded when they spar, when Caine willingly gives up control and lets John have him however he wants.
(Don't be afraid to live, Koji'd said to him once, and John thinks he's starting to remember how living like that felt)
When his phone goes off at exactly 10:00 am in the morning, John blinks.
John starts inching his way out of the kitchen to get to his phone in the dining room, a mug of freshly brewed coffee in hand. During that short exit, John sidesteps a trail of flour and shuffles his way past Caine who is cussing under his breath in Cantonese. The scene is already mildly concerning.
“John.” Koji greets when John picks up his phone, then continues without any preamble whatsoever, “How is living with Caine working out?”
John immediately thinks of Caine tarrying around back in the kitchen— the most hazardous it's been since they moved in— trying to whip up a new dish that hopefully doesn’t scar them for life. John thinks about their evening plans, about the smile Caine’s been wearing lately, and about the meeting Caine’s arranged with Mia.
“Full,” John replies, simply, after a couple of seconds have trickled by.
At the end of the other line, Koji chuckles fondly, like he already knows John is referring to his heart.
“Good,” Koji says, and John supposes he does.
“Hopefully not too full to fit me into both of your plans next week,” Koji continues. "I'd love to catch up after business in Paris wraps up."
"Just tell us when," John promises, smiling before he hangs up.
There's a familiar clacking of nails on the cement floors. A brief laugh escapes John at the sight of a concerned Dog, her ears pressed flat against her face. John reaches down to pet her and Dog's concern is instantly forgotten in the face of John's assurance, her sinewy tail thumping against the floor in line with his pats.