eric's gay little rings my beloved

Eric doesn't get it. Jack's just some guy, right? He's Shawn's older brother, but at the centerpoint of it, he's just some guy. And yet, Eric has never felt better than he has since he and Jack stepped into the same room. He just likes having the guy around! Every single friend Eric had ever had had been work, had been someone he had to maintain the relationship with and never wanted to come home with him. He never wanted what his little brother had when they were kids. He always thought that Cory and Shawn were a little weird, even if he always liked the kid. He still likes Shawn. They live together! But he's never felt about Shawn was he's starting to feel right now.

When Cor was really little, he once said he'd like to climb inside of Shawn's chest and go home with him, so that they could keep each other company. Eric has never wanted what he had. But he's starting to get the idea of what he meant, and jeez, that's a scary feeling. He doesn't know how Cory and Shawn did it when they were just kids. All this emotion and such a tiny little guy to process that scary desire of wanting someone to stay close to you. He can't imagine.

He starts keeping Jack in his back pocket, and he stops telling himself that its weird. That this isn't what guys do, going everywhere together and never finding one without the other. What the fuck does it matter what guys do? He's just one person, in an apartment, trying to make it one day at a time. Hopefully without pants if he can help it. And with Jack. Because he thinks the guy is neat. So what?

He gets Jack to come clubbing with him, takes him dancing, teaches him how to wear a dress properly, gets him into exercising with him. And Jack is amenable to all of it- he doesn't care that Eric is sometimes intense, or that sometimes he's so diluted it's like you could wash him away with water, and he doesn't even care that Eric lied about smoking. He thought they were talking about cigarettes! It wouldn't have been a lie if they were talking about cigarettes. Jack, New York City boy, has never smoked before, and he leans back when Eric offers him a joint, smiling and exposing his throat, and Eric has to stop himself from asking him if he knows what shotgunning is. Jack probably doesn't know, or at least doesn't know how. That doesn't mean that Eric needs to teach him.

He teaches himself witchcraft on one of the long tables at the library, bowed over a couple books (most heavily ruminating on Witchcraft for Dumb-Dumbs, but that is neither here nor there), and it's the hardest he's worked on anything in his entire life, maybe. A librarian watches him over her glasses, probably noticing that he has no idea what he's doing and just leaving him to it anyway; he doesn't blame her. It's the middle of the night. He just has a really bad feeling about this, you know? Somewhere in his gut behind all the jealousy and just hating Millie for being herself and rubbing her witchy little hands all over his Jackie, he really does have a bad feeling about this.

He thinks he puts on really well that seeing Jack and Shawn tied up doesn't scare him at all. Because holy fuck, it does. If the sacrifice hadn't worked as planned, but he hadn't interrupted, what would they have done? What would Millie have done? He's proud of himself for remembering to take her keys. Fuck only knows what she would have done if she kept them.

"Eric, wait. Even after all the rotten things I said to you, you’re still gonna invite me to come along?" Jack asks, and he looks at Eric like how Eric's been thinking about him the entire time. Like Eric hung the moon in the sky. Like he's worth a damn. Eric smiles.

"Of course, man, you’re my friend."

He says that and he means it. Jackie is his friend. Eric just also wants to put him in his pocket and keep him safe and teach him about Philly conduct because holy shit, he acts like a New York boy sometimes, and New York might be bigger, but Eric grew up nice, and he still knows how to beat somebody's breaks off if they don't have friends. But anyway. Jack's his friend. It's simpler, easier and safer to pretend that's all it is.

There's something about cooking Thanksgiving dinner with a guy that makes you feel like more than friends. Eric knew it was a bad idea as soon as he suggested it, as soon as it flew out of his mouth, really, but Jack couldn't be left alone for Thanksgiving, and having it at their apartment keeps Mom away from the baby picture albums. Even if they just stay friends, Jack is still gonna eventually see the baby picture books, but this way, he can deny the inevitable for as long as possible. The Matthews brood is kinda weird. He knows that. He knows that Jack already knows that he is weird too. But Jackie gets overwhelmed easy. He doesn't want his Mom doing her Welcome to the Neighborhood routine and freaking him out, is that so wrong?

But God, the alternative. Watching Jackie try to figure out pumpkin pie and trying to melt a turkey out of a block of ice. He cracks jokes and Jack gets snappy and Shawn hasn't really been hanging around during the day so much lately (probably actually going to class, hope against hope), so it's just them in their empty apartment. They're a disaster together. Eric's never been happier.

It's around three weeks before Christmas when he wakes up with Jackie in his bed, laying on his stomach with his face pushed into the pillow. They hadn't gone to bed together, hadn't even said goodnight before going to bed last night- Jack had been up late in the library again, and the library isn't really Eric's scene. He studies better when he can spread out all over the floor, which he mostly does in his bedroom, not even in the living room. It's hard to study in front of people! None of that is the point. He wakes up and Jack Hunter is in his bed like it's a normal place for him to be, like that's exactly where he belongs. Eric can't help but stare.

Jack always looks softer when he's asleep. Awake, he's an angel, so it's like looking at an angel or something. He's just relentlessly pretty. He's good to look at. He's opening his eyes.

"Hey," Eric says before Jack can freak out, his voice soft. Jack pushes his face back into his pillow with a groan.

"My bed was cold when I got in last night," he explains, voice muffled.

"Yeah, Jackie, that's what happens to it when you're not in it," Eric cajoles, his tone half sooth and half agitator. Jack picks his head up just to glare at him, even if it's pretty obviously halfhearted.

"It was cold, so like some heat seeking person that cuddles, I came into your room. What are you doing to me, Eric Matthews?" Jack asks. He looks fond. Eric chooses to believe his expression over the pang in his chest of too much, of too far. He always gets to be too much, gets to going too far.

"Stay?" he asks anyway, fingers around Jack's wrist. He can't help that hungry thing within himself, that thing that wants to have and wants to hold, that thing that wants to be in love far more than he's ever known how to be. Jack looks at him sideways from where he had pushed himself up onto his hands and knees and gives Eric a shrug, climbing back into the bed and collapsing onto Eric with a fit of laughter. He's heavy where he lands, but it's heavy in a good way. He's warm and he presses into all the places where Eric feels most empty, his stock sturdy and his clothes soft. Eric wraps his arms around Jack's shoulders.

"You're so weird," Jack says, but he's grinning so wide it's fit to split his face wide open, and he's got his knees on either side of Eric's hips, and he isn't acting like he thinks Eric is weird at all. Eric's heart could burst looking up at him. He reaches up to cup Jack's face.

"You're weird too," he whispers, and then he leans in. He lets Jack come the last couple of centimeters, leaves the space and then gets swooped up into a kiss, and besides the ritual sacrifice, he can see why Millie liked him so much. Of course he can see why Millie liked Jack so much, though. He likes Jack too. He wants to kiss him and hold him and keep him close. They've been kissing for longer than Eric intended when Jack presses down into him and Eric can't stop the way his hips cant up; he's not even twenty, what can he say about his hair trigger? Jack grins down at him like he's any different.

"You like me," Jack says, confident and a little breathy, and Eric wants to fucking bite him. So he does. He leans up and he nips under Jack's jaw, just because he can.

"You like me too," he whines, pulling Jack even further down on top of him so that he can hide his face in the other boy's shoulder. He's not even super confident about it, but he's assuring himself that Jack wouldn't have kissed him if he didn't want more. There's some alignment happening all the way down their bodies but no urgency, no reason to make something from the first time they've kissed in the way that Eric would be desperate to with someone less important. Jack lays on top of Eric like some kind of weighted blanket, tucked against him so sweetly it's hard to focus on anything else.

"I like you too," Jackie whispers his confirmation, just casual like he isn't making Eric's heart beat out of his chest. He wraps his arms around Jack again and puts the fingers of one hand in the other boy's hair, scritching through the back of it like he's always wanted to do. Jack melts against him. If he had known Jack would do that, he would have done this months ago.

"Are we going back to sleep, buddy?" Eric continues coming his fingers through Jack's hair, making the other boy sigh.

"If you keep touching me like that, definitely," he says. Eric grins.

"I'll touch you however you want, baby," he says, wiggling his eyebrows even if Jackie can't see it.

"Eric," Jack says simply, his voice not particularly harsh, but firm, like he always is when he's reigning Eric in. Eric wants to curl up in the sound of that voice.