Stumble Forward

by Alex Jane

  Alec poked him in the back in retaliation as they walked toward the kitchen but he knew it was true.

  The coffee pot was already warming and Jack poured a mug for him, topped up his own and came to sit next to Alec at the breakfast bar.

  “So you wanna tell me where you’ve been since yesterday?” Jack didn’t look or sound angry but Alec could see the tension that had been there when he opened the door, clawing its way back to the surface.

  “Mostly driving around.”

  “Mostly?”

  Alec steeled himself. He had been driving around and he had come up with a plan and he had to stick with it. He’d cried a lot, beat the steering wheel with his hands until he remembered the airbag and stared out the window, terrified, trying to figure out what to do. Until he realized, he already had a plan. It had been gifted to him twice. He was just going to talk, like he had to Stella, just say everything, every I love you, every I don’t care, every —

  “So, Allie called.” Alec looked up from his mug. Jack looked at him sheepishly, pale again and reached out to Alec. “I’m so sorry. This is all my fault. I didn’t think—I’m so sorry.”

  <•••>

  There was some yelling. Actually, there was quite a lot of yelling. Mostly Alec but Jack had retaliated when Alec had started to freak Howie out. One look at the poor boy, trying to slink away into the lounge, the giant dog trying to compress himself to occupy the smallest possible space, broke Alec’s heart all over again and he’d ended up lying on the floor with him rubbing his belly in apology while Howie tried to lick his moving hand.

  Jack towered over him, his face expressionless. “I think we should—I think we need to sleep before we talk about this.”

  Alec nodded without looking up. He roughly kissed Howie on the face and then pushed himself up and headed up the stairs without so much as glancing at Jack.

  When he came out of the shower, the old tension and coffee breath washed away, Jack was already in bed, on his back, face turned away from Alec’s side of the bed. They had made a promise when they started out that if they ever fought, that they would always still sleep in the same bed. The whole grabbing a pillow and heading for the spare room routine might have been easier, but it was too close to the slippery slope down to ‘irreconcilable’. As Alec tried to get comfortable next to Jack whose anxiety was oozing out onto his side of the bed, he wished he hadn’t come up with the suggestion in the first place.

  They both lay there for the longest time, minutes probably but the ache in his bones made Alec feel like it was hours, until finally he muttered, “Fuck this. I’m not fucking doing this,” and threw the covers off his legs to sit up. In an instant Jack was on him, strong hands gripping his hips, his waist, pinning him to the bed.

  “No! No, please Alec, please don’t! I’ll do anything—anything, just—just please don’t—”

  Alec managed to twist round in Jack’s grip to see his horrified desperate, tear-streaked face trying to hold back the sobs that were so close to the surface.

  “Oh God, Jack, I—” He reached down and used his palm to wipe the wetness from Jack’s cheek and then held his jaw. “I was just going to put the light on. So I could see you. So I could say I was sorry.”

  Jack looked at him, untrusting for a moment but then let go of him. Alec flicked the light on and then turned to sit cross-legged on the bed. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have—I should have let you explain and not started yelling like that. If you want to tell me, I’ll listen.”

  “No more yelling?”

  “No. No yelling. And I’m—I am sorry about that. Just tell me—”

  <•••>

  It had come down to three words.

  Or so Alec learned when Jack began to talk. Just like Alec had done with Stella in the diner. He talked like the floodgates had opened and there was no closing them until he had confessed everything.

  Jack had been in a bad place. Coping with sobriety wasn’t as hard as it could have been, he’d been dry plenty of times before but once Alicia found out about him and Alec, he couldn’t deal with it. He knew it was his fault, knew he was to blame. He had wanted Alec from the first moment he had seen him and to find out that he was wanted back—he couldn’t help himself. He knew how much it would hurt his sister but he’d done it anyway. He thought he could live with the guilt of that.

  Alicia’s revelation just felt like another righteous blow. Of course, it would happen. If he loved someone and that someone loved him back, of course they would turn out to be the one person he should never, ever want. It was his life. There was something twisted in him. He had always known it, had always been told it was there and now there was proof. Because he didn’t give a shit whether Alec was his brother, he still needed him and still wanted him. Still loved him.

  But when he had seen Alec, when he had come to the house to talk but they had ended up fucking on the hallway floor, Jack had been so hurt and confused and couldn’t help all the crazy words that started pouring out of his mouth, because he had thought for a moment that they had a chance.

  But then there were those three little words.

  “When you said you didn’t want me—”

  “Wait! What? I never said that!”

  “You said ‘I don’t care’ That’s what you said.”

  “Yes but I—I didn’t mean that—I meant that I didn’t care about anything but you. Only you. I wanted to tell you I loved you but—”

  “That would have changed everything—”

  “What on earth made you think I wouldn’t want you?”

  Everything after that had been a blur for Jack, like he was already dead and his body was just finding ways to catch up. He loved Alec, wanted him and knew he always would but he couldn’t see anyway to live knowing Alec hated him.

  But then he couldn’t even get that right.

  When the nurses had brought Alicia in to see him after they had patched him up, she had been so calm.

  “Why, Jack?”

  “He hates me—but I can’t stop loving him. And he’s your brother too.”

  She had cried and cried and he had been so confused by the way she kept apologizing until she told him about the affair, about John finding out that Alicia wasn’t his and how Alec was right outside, how he did care, did love him and they needed to find a way to fix this.

  It was Jack’s idea to lie to Alec. “Just tell him it was me not you that Dad found out about, I mean there’s a chance, right, that I’m not his either?”

  “What the hell am I supposed to say to him?”

  “I don’t know, Allie, I-I don’t want him to hate me.”

  He didn’t ask what she had said. It didn’t cross his mind that she had mentioned the time she got ill, the incident they had talked about that day in the kitchen. The day Alec started to go a little weird on him.

  He had noticed it. Alec looking at him with sad eyes, holding him extra tight, waking up in the night to find him already awake and watching Jack sleep. But he’d accepted the explanations nightmare project, difficult client, need a vacation, but when Alec said he was heading home for a couple of days, he knew something was up, that something had shifted and he thought maybe it was time. To talk. Really talk about everything. Just as soon as Alec got home.

  “But then you didn’t come home.”

  Alec reached out and pushed his fingers into Jack’s clenched fists. “I did. It just took me a little longer than it should have.”

  Jack looked up at him. “I’m sorry, Alec. I shouldn’t have lied to you. I kinda lost my mind a little. I should have told you.”

  Alec shook his head. “Maybe you shouldn’t have lied. But it doesn’t change the fact that I shouldn’t have made you feel like you needed to. I should have talked to you, should have told you how I felt. I’m so sorry, Jack.”

  “So—”Jack’s eyes flicked up to Alec’s but he looked back down at their hands almost immediately. “Does it make a difference? Does it change—?”

  �
�No.” Alec voice was firm, “No. Nothing has changed. I love you and I want to be with you and I told you already.” He took hold of Jack’s chin and forced him to look up, “Nothing is ever going to change that.”

  Jack smiled and it looked like a weight was falling away from him. “So, should I do it? Take the DNA test? We’d know for sure.”

  Alec smiled and shook his head. “No. Why waste the money? I can think of a thousand things I’d rather spend it on.”

  Jack leaned forward and placed his soft lips to Alec’s and whispered, “Oh yeah? Like what?”

  Alec smirked. “Well, right now, I’d pay you to sleep. I’m so tired, can we sleep now?”

  They lay back, Jack pulling the sheet over them, Alec slotting his back up against Jack’s chest. Jack’s arms wrapped around him, holding him tight, both of them exhaling with the comfort of it. Jack nestled his head into the back of Alec’s neck. “We’re okay, aren’t we?”

  Alec took Jack’s hand from his chest and brought it to his mouth, kissing the palm of it before putting it back over his heart. He whispered, “We are, Jack. We definitely are,” before sleep overwhelmed him. He wasn’t sure if Jack heard it but he must have at least known it, as he was sleeping too.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The first time Jack proposed he had gone all out. It was their second anniversary and Jack booked a restaurant they couldn’t comfortably afford, laid out a suit for Alec to change into, replete with a fancy new tie. The whole evening had been wonderful, until Jack pulled out the ring. Jack had said all kinds of things about love and commitment and Alec had beamed wider than Jack, when Jack slipped the ring on his finger. But when Jack had started talking about actual wedding plans, Alec felt his smile slide away.

  The drive home had been icy. It took a week of permafrost before Jack started to come around. They had talked about it. Jack knew intellectually that it was a bad idea but he still couldn’t reconcile his want with reality.

  “I just think it’s stupid. I love you and I don’t see why we can’t get married.”

  “Jack, come on—do we keep having to go over this?”

  “I think it’s entirely feasible that two men could co-incidentally have fathers with the same name—”

  “And middle name? And job? And date of birth? Jack, it’s illegal! Even if we don’t get charged with—whatever—they would never let us live together—they would never let you teach—”

  “I just think that—”

  “Jack, please! I love you—can’t that be enough?” Alec crawled towards him on his hands and knees as he said it, pressing Jack’s legs apart when he started to protest. The complaining half-words became incoherent noises when Alec started to mouth at Jack’s dick through his sweatpants and then there was just breathy silence when Alec took Jack in his mouth.

  Six months later—the second time Jack proposed—he had let slip a Please don’t leave me amongst his usual litany of endearments and it became a little clearer to Alec where the urgency to get wed was coming from.

  There was no special occasion that time, just a lazy Sunday morning. It was a month after they had moved into their own place. Alicia and Jack had sold their old house and his share of the profit had been enough to put down a sizable deposit that Alec could afford the mortgage payments on his own and still have enough to support Jack through college. It wasn’t huge but it had a guest bedroom that doubled as Jack’s office and a backyard with trees big enough that Howie could lie in the shade all day if he wanted.

  Alec had woken up, arms folded under his pillow, the sun streaming in through the curtainless window, Jack mouthing his shoulder and his fingers dipping into his hole. Alec canted his hips back and forth, urging Jack in and getting friction on his first hard-on of the day against the warm sheet beneath him.

  They didn’t talk. There was no need. Jack just kept up the rhythm with his hand, curling his fingers as he corkscrewed them in and out, giving Alec’s prostate his full attention, rubbing his own dick along Alec thigh, smearing a stripe of precome. Only when he pushed Alec’s legs apart, clambered in between them and slid into Alec in one smooth stroke, did he speak,

  “God, Alec—what you do to me—Jesus—how did I ever live without this, without you—God, babe—so good—”

  Jack grabbed Alec’s hips with his huge hands, and unceremoniously yanked them up and pounded into him, holding him tight while Alec reached a hand under himself, and caught his bobbing erection, jerking it violently in time with Jack’s thrusts until they both came, hard and loud in the quiet morning.

  Jack collapsed down onto Alec, the pair of them content to lie panting, until Jack whispered in Alec’s ear, “I love you. More than anything. Marry me. Just say you’ll marry me, please?”

  It wasn’t the first time they had argued while Jack’s cock was inside Alec’s body. There had been the what exactly do you mean I look chunky from back there? incident but that had mostly been Jack looking to get a rise out of Alec. And succeeding.

  This was a little different. The bad angle and force with which Jack had jerked away at Alec’s, Not going to happen, Jack, had stung, and when Alec was cleaning himself up in the guest bathroom, there was blood on the towel that justified his yelp. He was pissed and ready to rip into Jack when he finally unlocked the bathroom door but his face was all puffy and red and Jack face started to crumple as soon as his eyes met Alec’s. It wasn’t until the third or fourth, don’t leave me, that Alec registered what Jack was saying.

  Alec cradled Jack’s head in his arms and let him cry himself out. When he was done, Alec put him back into bed, brought water and coffee from the kitchen. Then he sat and let Jack tell him all about the wonderful advice he’d been getting from his friends at college, namely Barbara and her excellent observations that maybe, if Alec didn’t want to get married it was probably because he was planning on leaving him.

  The third time was less dramatic. Alec wasn’t sure it counted at all. Jack was leaning on the cart humming along to the muzak lilting through the store, while Alec tried to decide between two different shapes of pasta. Alec liked to be thorough, know what he was buying. Jack was losing the will to live.

  “Y’know, when we do finally get married, I’m putting a clause in the prenup about the length of time you are allowed to look at dried goods that only contain two ingredients.”

  Alec’s head turned slowly and glared. Jack shrugged. “It’s basically flour and water, Al. Just pick one.”

  Alec flung the box of fusilli down hard into the cart and stormed away, the word, prenup, screaming in his head and stinging tears into his eyes.

  The fourth, and final time it happened, there was no argument. Ethan, Kate and Lucy driving up for a long weekend had become a regular event over the previous two and a half years. Alec and Jack would babysit while Ethan and Kate had a night out that didn’t involve a curfew and usually involved them rolling back in the following morning in time for breakfast.

  Alec and Jack would compete for the title of Favorite Uncle by taking Lucy out to the park or zoo, although all she ever wanted to do there was scream at the exotic birds for no discernable reason. It was like parrots and toucans were the most amazing thing she’d ever seen and she just couldn’t keep all her excitement inside.

  Alec would hold her for a while until the piercing shrieks brought on an inevitable headache and then Jack would take over. There was something about sitting there, watching Jack effortlessly holding the tiny screeching girl, trying his best to get her to use her inside voice, and letting the glares of the other visitors just roll off him. He was beautiful, and Alec really felt how lucky he was

  If the weather was warm enough they would set up a sprinkler in the back yard for Lucy and Howie to run around under and sometimes Phil and Matt would come over, and they would cook out and sit out and talk until the sun was long gone. It felt like family.

  That particular weekend, the weather had not been good and although it hadn’t rained, they opted to order in pizza and
settled down to debate which movie they were going to watch. Which was when Ethan had announced that he and Kate were finally getting married.

  Alec and Jack had both been pleased, genuinely pleased, at Ethan’s announcement and the four of them talked long into the night about plans and how it would or wouldn’t change things. But as the night went on, Jack had become quieter and quieter. He headed up just before Alec, and was already sitting on the bed in his t-shirt and boxers, watching as Alec walked in and stripped.

  Alec could feel Jack’s eyes on him as he pulled off his shirt and slung it towards the laundry basket. Jack sat quietly, like he had been most of the evening and Alec knew what was coming.

  When he slipped into bed, Jack’s long arm immediately came around him, his palm on Alec’s chest pulling him snug against Jack’s. When Jack brushed his cheek against Alec’s ear and inhaled ready to form words, Alec preempted him. “Please don’t, Jack.” It wasn’t cold, just weary.

  Jack smiled and kissed the back of Alec’s neck. “You don’t even know what I was going to say—” He sounded unconvinced, the words petering out as he spoke. He squeezed Alec tighter but Alec didn’t return it, going lax in his arms. “Alec, please. I love you. I wanna marry you. I want what Ethan and Kate have. Is that so much to ask?”

  “I’m sorry,” Alec mumbled, trying to not let the heartbreak he felt show in his voice. “I’m sorry I’m not enough for you.”

  Jack slowly pulled his arm away. Alec didn’t try to stop him and they lay with their backs to each other deep into the night before they fell asleep.

  The following morning, Jack didn’t slam the front door behind him, it just closed heavily. Enough to make Alec flinch and a framed print his mother had given them slip to a jaunty angle on its nail in the hallway. Ethan looked at him and smirked as he brought his coffee to his lips. “Trouble in paradise?”

  Alec shook his head. Jack was pissed enough not to care that Ethan had been sitting at their dining table eating breakfast as he stormed around the house gathering the belongings he had strewn about the place the night before. Maybe if Kate hadn’t taken Lucy out to the store he might have tried to curb his temper, but she had and he hadn’t.