#behavior modifcation

In the in between, it was too hard. Jack wasn’t supposed to move freely outside the house. If Joe wanted to take him anywhere, there were specific WRU protocols. Like the collar. Joe wouldn’t collar him, wouldn’t do anything to signal to others what Jack was so long as he was under contract, so they didn’t do much. 

But the contract is voided now. Jack doesn’t belong to anyone but himself; Joe says he never did. And so they’re here, at the museum. 

Joe once said he fell in love with Jack at the Met. He fell in love with Jack while Jack fell in love with art. 

Jack had never been to a museum before Joe. It wasn’t something anyone would have thought to do with a kid like him. But immediately, he was grateful to Joe for bringing him. He’d always thought museums were cold, dead places, but he couldn’t have been more wrong. There was something about knowing he was surrounded by beautiful pieces of other people that had managed to survive decades and centuries beyond their creators that made him feel a little less alone. The white eyes of the sculptures and busts, the faces in the paintings, all of them had outlasted whatever horrors came before. Maybe Jack could too. 

Of course Jack fell in love with art. How could he not? 

Jack doesn’t know when he fell in love with Joe again, but being here, he can feel it. It sits, warm in his chest. Alive again, just like Jack is. He survived, like everything else in this museum. 

“You remember when we used to do this?” Joe asks. His fingers thread through Jack’s as they step into the Great Hall. 

Jack nods, kissing Joe’s cheek. “I missed it,” he says, and it’s true, even if he didn’t realize it at the time.

“I missed it too,” Joe says shyly. It doesn’t take a genius to sort out that he wasn’t spending his weekends on Museum Mile while Jack was with Ivan.

It’s something they haven’t talked much about, actually: what Joe’s life was like then. Jack’s suffering is well-documented—literally, thanks to Ivan—but Joe likes to ignore his own. Jack remembers when Joe worried himself into the hospital. Who knows how bad it was before he came home? 

Jack thinks Joe still looks a little tired, in his slouchy professorial way. Rumpled sweater, tousled hair, and dark smudges beneath his pretty green eyes. Only now, Joe is the right kind of tired. The kind that suggests that he’s earned it, that something big is over and done. 

And it is. Joe doesn’t have to worry anymore. Neither of them do, even though Jack knows they will. It will be a difficult habit to break. But they have to try. They deserve a little peace and quiet. 

Jack kisses Joe again, and Joe’s cheeks color. It feels good, Jack thinks, to have that effect on Joe again. It feels good to choose.

“Where should we start?“ Joe asks.

Jack pretends to consider. He looks to his right, even though he knows he won’t be able to visit the Egyptian wing for a long time; the death masks and sarcophagi hit different now. To his left, he knows he’ll find the brighter galleries of the Greco-Roman collection, but something about wandering through statues missing their various pieces and parts doesn’t exactly appeal to Jack  just now either. He lets his gaze stop on the grand staircase and then looks down at Joe with a tentative smile. 

“I should’ve guessed,” Joe says, squeezing Jack’s hand. “Let’s go.” 

There’s one piece they always have to visit. Well, really, it’s Jack who has to visit; Joe just humors him. Every time they come to the museum, Jack makes the pilgrimage upstairs and weaves through the galleries of smug portraits of rich people and pastel cherubs until he finds it. 

It’s a plaster model of Cupid and Psyche. Jack knows the story: the beautiful girl who finds herself in Aphrodite’s crosshairs when she dares to love Cupid. Mythology was one of the only things Jack liked when he bothered to show up to English class. The sculpture catches the two young lovers just as Cupid is waking Psyche from her sleeping death with a gentle kiss. He cradles her head in his carved hands, and her arms reach for him. Something about it makes Jack’s chest ache. It always has.

He knows the finished version is in the Louvre–at this point, he knows everything about it–but Jack likes something about the plaster’s rough finish, how he can see the pins marking the artist’s reference. It makes Jack feel like he could almost reach out and touch it. 

It takes a minute for Jack to find the right gallery. The European collections are always crowded, and on a weekend, it’s even worse. He clings to Joe’s hand as he tries to remember the way, feeling a little bit like a lost child. But he isn’t lost. He couldn’t be, not with Joe by his side. He knows that now. 

He hears Joe’s breath shift before he sees it. 

“There it is, Jackie. Look.” 

And it is there. They’re there. Cupid and Psyche, Joe and Jack. Just like they always have been. 

No one else in the gallery is even looking at the piece, too distracted by the stuffy paintings on the wall. Jack’s never understood why they put it all the way back here. 

They move close to the white pedestal, still hand in hand. 

“I love this one,” Jack says. Needlessly, of course, because Joe knows.

Joe lets go of his hand and then wraps his arm around Jack’s waist. He presses a kiss to Jack’s shoulder. “I know you do. I do too. I–” 

“What?”

“I came here a few times. Before. While you were–” 

Joe doesn’t finish, but he doesn’t need to. Jack understands. 

“Oh.”

“It made me feel closer to you.”

Joe wraps both arms around Jack, as if to remind himself that he can. 

There was no way for Jack to feel closer to Joe while he was away. Ivan did everything he could to sever that connection, and he’d been successful. Like Psyche in the myth, Jack was enslaved by his tormentor, sure that he’d been abandoned by the person he loved most. 

But Joe never abandoned him. Jack knows that now. He won’t abandon Joe either. 

He looks at the model, pressing Joe close to him. And even if the two lovers are impossibly beautiful, Jack sees them–him and Joe. Maybe Jack’s death was waking instead of sleeping, but he knows what it is to be punished in the name of someone else’s jealousy, and he knows what it is to be revived by love. It might have taken more than a single kiss to bring Jack back, but it was Joe’s love that did it. It doesn’t matter how cheesy it sounds; Jack knows it’s true. 

Joe chose him, and Jack will choose Joe forever. It’s something Jack hasn’t let himself think about in a very long time, but just now, he can’t ignore his certainty. He doesn’t take being certain for granted anymore. 

“Joey?” 

“Hmm?”

“Joey?” Jack says again.

“What is it, baby?” 

The words slip out without fanfare; Jack doesn’t even have the wherewithal to drop to one knee. He just knows he has to ask, and so he does. “Will you marry me?” 

Joe’s face turns toward Jack, his mouth hanging open. “Jackie–do you–” 

“I mean it,” Jack says. “You–you brought me back. You waited for me. I–please, Joey. Please say yes.” 

Joe’s cheeks are pink again, and he reaches up to brace his hands on either side of Jack’s face. “I don’t want you to feel obligated–”

“I don’t,” Jack interrupts. His hands are light on Joe’s shoulders, and he can feel eyes shifting toward them, but he doesn’t care; Jack is used to being watched, and at least this is worth watching. “I want you. I know it,” he murmurs, pressing a soft kiss to Joe’s lips. “I choose this. I choose you.”

“I choose you too,” Joe says breathlessly. He closes his eyes, and when he opens them again, they are bright with tears. “Yes, Jackie. Yes.”  

They kiss again, just like the stone lovers behind them, and Jack knows that he has finally made his way back.