People say that you never know what's important to you until you're faced with losing it. Jackson said that was bullshit.
The lacrosse team had suffered a brutal defeat that afternoon, and everyone was the suspected weak link. Coach Finstock had taken Greenberg by the scruff of the neck and had marched him to the locker room, Lydia had yelled at Scott and Isaac for paying more attention to each other than the field, and Jackson had turned on Stiles for the sake of it. Danny played the diplomat and had steered Jackson away from Stiles, and bustled him in to his car before driving home.
As soon as they reached his room, Danny threw himself down on the futon, groaning as he rolled his shoulders back "I'm starting to lose faith in the idea of us ever winning a lacrosse game again. Maybe I should pick up something else. Like cheerleading."
Jackson snorts from the desk chair at the edge of the room. "Cheerleading? I can see that." He puts his elbows on his knees and leans forward, snorting again. "Tell me Danny, would you be at the bottom or the top of the pyramid?"
Danny laughs, crushing an empty cherry soda can in his hand before aiming it with precision at Jackson's head. He chuckles to himself as he notes Jackson's hand coming half way to check his hair was still perfect. Rolling his eyes, he mutters "wouldn't you like to know" before stretching out his aching muscles again.
"Yeah, I would actually."
Danny freezes, then props himself up on his elbows, staring at Jackson suspiciously. Licking his bottom lip, he considers a hundred different replies, before settling on an almost easy "you're joking, right?"
Jackson shrugs with a look on his face that others would mistake for unconcerned and lackadaisical, but Danny knows better. He doesn't miss the tapping of Jackson's index finger on his thigh, or the miniscule furrow of his eyebrows as he shoots back with "you know me to joke often, Danny?"
Apply hefty sarcasm, yes, but joke? No. No, that wasn't Jackson's style at all. Danny keeps his mouth shut as he watches Jackson try, and fail, to maintain decent eye contact with him. He didn't know where either of them was going with this, and a shred of him wasn't sure he wanted to, but he thought hell, he might as well say it now.
"I'd bring up the 'you're not my type' argument again, but..." Danny gives a barely tangible twist of the lips "but that's not strictly true anymore."
Jackson says nothing, failing terribly at trying to mask his bewildered expression with one of cool confidence. "Oh?" He says, in a desperate attempt, although not an entirely dishonest attempt, at being smug.
Danny was the one to drop his gaze this round. "Seeing someone literally die in front of you and then miraculously come back from the dead can leave you with some pretty mixed up feelings about them, surprisingly."
A beat passed, then it stretches in to a terrible silence, and looking up all Danny can think is fuck, fuck, fuck, why the hell did I say that, fuck as what could only have been described as panic was thinly plastered on Jackson's face.
"Jesus, Danny," he breathed, "I was only suggesting we fool around. I didn't - know." At the slightest hint of any affection, Jackson's systems shut down. Sex, he could handle, that had been his only angle, but Danny had completely blind sighted him, and the implications had winded him. Some part of him was aware that Danny could take it the wrong way, maybe think that he was the problem, but Jackson didn't have the coherency to be reassuring.
Wiping a hand down his face, Danny groans "oh my God" and tries as hard as he can to back pedal, noting vaguely that Jackson was saying his name. "Oh my God, please don't make this anymore mortifying than it already is." He waves his hands in front of his face, shaking his head. "Fuck, Jackson, I'm not in love with you, let's just forget I said anything."
"Danny." Jackson repeats, irritation and concern making a cocktail of his tone. "Danny. Danny, listen to me-"
"No. God, Jackson, let's just drop it." Danny pleads, still trying to appear nonchalant. Since he had been wised up to the whole werewolf deal, Danny had found himself wrapped up in their world, joining Lydia and Stiles as the token humans, and for a second he had let himself forget that he was still an average, hormonal teenager. He suspected Jackson had, too, but Jackson wasn't willing to let this go.
"Danny, no. We have to talk about this." He had risen from the desk chair at some point, although neither of them were sure when, and now was propped up against the desk itself with his arms folded over his chest. He wasn't sure he wanted to talk about it, he knew if he made Danny spill that he would have to follow suit, but he decided that he'd cross that bridge when he came to it. "God, Danny, you don't think I want to? But let's face facts here, if we did and it ended, where would that leave us? I'd end up losing the only person who gives a shit about me, and I'm not ready for that."
His best friend throws his arms up, exasperated. "What do you want me to say, Jackson? So yeah, you are my type, and I have the hots for you." His voice drops, and Jackson almost misses what he follows up with. "The night I thought we'd lost you, I slept in your lacrosse jersey." Danny wants to laugh at how pathetic it sounds out loud, but he finds nothing humorous about it. The look Danny gives Jackson is almost defiant as he sighs. "Would you like me to go on?"
Jackson, dumbfounded, nods slightly, saying "a little bit, yeah."
Danny smiles at him weakly. "Tough. You're up."
"Shit, Danny. You know I don't do stuff like this." He swallows thickly. "Can't do stuff like this."
Danny is sympathetic to the fact that Jackson's is stunted when it came to expressing himself, he truly was, but they'd both gone too far. He wouldn't let his best friend back down now. "Try. For me."
Jackson's throat feels tight and constricted, his mouth as dry as cotton and he struggles to keep from clamming up. "You're my type too. I guess you always have been." He laughs, the sound tinged with bitterness. "Every time I'd see you take another guy home, I got jealous. But hey, I was your wingman, what could I do about it?" Jackson knew he'd catapulted himself past the point of no return now, and he regretted starting this whole thing in the first place. He was Jackson Whittemore, for fuck sake, what would the others say if they saw him like this? But it wasn't them seeing him like this. It was Danny. With tremendous effort, Jackson looks at him and his breath catches at the look he is given in return.
"So." He begins, shakily. "Was that enough?"
And Danny laughs at him. For a brittle, painful second Jackson thinks the laugh is mocking, is malicious, or even worse, is pitying,but relief courses through him as he realises that, while definitely teasing, Danny's laugh is the signal that things were alright, and Danny's laugh was infectious. At first Jackson catches himself smiling at Danny's dimples, before the boyish humour of the situation washed over him. God, they were a pathetic pair.
As they laughed, they moved, Danny swinging his legs over the futon as Jackson pushed himself from off of the desk, and then they meet somewhere in the middle. The indomitable chuckles were dying down slightly, but Danny was still smiling broadly and lazily as he kisses Jackson over and over again, walking him backwards towards his bed. This wasn't one of the suave encounters Jackson bragged about across the cafeteria table, but it was damn near perfect nonetheless.
That night they had sex (they didn't make love, Jackson still wasn't ready for that) and Jackson discovered three things. One, the answer to his initial question was that Danny would be at the top of the pyramid had he ever switched a lacrosse stick for a cheer uniform. Two, Danny was big on cuddling and three, Jackson didn't mind. He woke up in a bed that was familiar, but never this intimately, and for a brief moment Jackson considers slipping out and texting Danny later with some fob of an excuse but that thought shudders to a halt as Danny's arm circles around his waist and pulls Jackson's back flush against his chest.
"Go back to sleep, Jackson." Danny mumbles against his hair, and Jackson figures that everything else could wait for now.
They say that you never know what's important to you until you're faced with losing it. Whoever the hell theywere, Jackson could see their point.