It was incredibly unfair that no matter what he did, or what state he was in, Jackson was always breathtakingly good-looking. It didn't make any sense. On his best days Stiles felt like he was decent looking, but no one would ever really confirm if he was attractive or not. Jackson sat in a Walmart camping chair, shirtless with a blanket over his shoulders doing that awkward I just put something in my mouth that was too hot but it's so good I'm going to keep eating it through the pain thing and he was still gorgeous.
Sure, he was an emotional minefield that Stiles had spectacularly failed to navigate correctly so far, but god damn he was smoking hot. That's not the reason Stiles stuck around through all the crazy shit they did to each other. He'd genuinely seen under the hood of the car so to speak. There was another side to Jackson. It wasn't that he was wearing a mask or hiding who he really was. It was more than that. It was like there was a person he was constantly striving to become, and when something didn't fit with that image of the person he wanted to be it triggered a lot of self-doubt, and maybe even some self-hatred.
Stiles didn't really have an opinion on which Jackson he liked more, the idealized one in Jackson's head or the work in progress. They were both Jackson, and Stiles had just come to like, probably love him. Jackson swallowed the last of the s'more he'd been eating and narrowed his eyes at Stiles.
"What are you staring at?" Jackson asked.
"You have no shirt on. I have eyes. Literally no one on earth who had eyes and was sitting across from you shirtless wouldn't be staring at you."
That's not what Stiles wanted to say, but sometimes his mouth just sort of did its own thing. They both had that problem. It was probably the number one source of conflict in their… uhm… negotiations? It seemed sometimes more like they were negotiating a relationship than being in one.
Jackson tilted his head like he was considering saying something, but instead leaned over to grab his bottle of Gatorade instead. Stiles watched him drink it in fascination. He probably should have been dwelling more on the conversation they'd just had. Thinking about how close they'd come to breaking up despite not officially being in a relationship. The thing was he was just emotionally exhausted from the back and forth and his mind was on autopilot. His onboard navigation only seemed to have one destination, into Jackson's jeans.
"Can I touch you?" Stiles asked. He immediately regretted it. He was just so confused about basically everything that'd happened in the last day.
"What?" Jackson's eyebrows shot up, as if of all the things he thought Stiles might say that might not have even been on the list.
"Sorry that probably sounded like… I don't know like I was making an awkward pass at you."
"Were you not?"
"No, I meant it in like a more general way." Stiles rolled his shoulders, looked away from Jackson and into the fire. "You seem like you have a thing where you don't like being touched. Maybe just in public, or maybe when not in a sexual situation or something, or maybe not by me. I don't know."
Jackson cleared his throat, took a drink from his bottle, maybe trying to buy himself some time. Stiles's leg started bouncing. He hated awkward silences, made it his life's mission to fill them up with something, even if that something was usually just babbling.
"You touching me in public makes me uncomfortable."
Stiles nodded at the fire. Yep. That was as painful to hear as he thought it was going to be. Stupid mouth. Stupid questions. His leg stopped bouncing and he took a breath that burned a little going down.
"I'm sorr—"
"You can touch me," Jackson interrupted. "I can't guarantee that sometimes I won't pull away, especially if it's in public. I would prefer that you didn't do it when we were in public together, but… I don't know. Whatever. You have my permission." Jackson sat back more, sliding down in his chair. He pulled the blanket around him tightly rather than letting it hang open.
Well if that wasn't the most mixed of signals. Stiles wasn't sure what he was supposed to do with that. The words sounded like an invitation, but Jackson's body language was anything but. Not that Stiles thought it was an invitation to immediately go over and touch him. He definitely did want to do that. Not like in a sex way but in like a I want to be close to this person so badly that when I'm not close to them I'm not sure if I'm sad, hungry, or just missing some middle portion of my body that must be with the person and that's why I feel empty inside when I'm not with them kind of way. But also in a sex way.
Stiles almost jumped when he realized Jackson had stood up and walked around the fire to stand next to him. He'd been so focused on his thoughts that he'd completely lost touch with what was going on around him. He looked up and got frozen in Jackson's ice blue eyes.
"What do you want, Stiles? You brought me up here. You made me food, made sure we'd have whatever we needed." Jackson gestured around the campsite. "Why? What did you want to happen here?"
Wow. That was direct. Stiles wished Jackson had said something like what do you expect me to do, then he could have tried to crack a joke like saying I expect you to die Mr. Bond. Instead Jackson was right there next to him. Looking down at him with those eyes that were hypnotizing even when they didn't have the reflection of the firelight dancing in them.
"Words," Stiles said. "I'm supposed to say words."
Jackson nodded, a half smile forming on his lips.
"I…" Stiles grasped for something, anything. "I… I thought…"
Jackson stretched out a hand. Stiles looked at it like he didn't know what hands were or what they were used for. Was he supposed to stand up? To take Jackson's hand so Jackson could pull him to his feet and then they'd be kissing and they'd forget about all the awkward things that had been said and done and then they'd just have sex and then nothing would really be different because the next time they were in a semi public situation Jackson would treat him like he had scurvy or something. Stiles wasn't exactly sure how you were supposed to treat someone with scurvy besides give them oranges maybe. He wasn't really a pirate guy, so he didn't—
Jackson flicked him in the forehead.
"Ow," Stiles said, reflexively rubbing his forehead with one hand.
"I didn't ask you what you want to do with the rest of your life. I asked what your plan was for coming up here. Did you just want to eat some s'mores and then try not to break the tent while fucking like rabbits? Or did you want to like lay on a blanket and look up at the stars and read each other poetry?"
Stiles didn't think that rabbits fucking could bring down a tent, at least not a single pair of rabbits. Which wasn't to say that he knew a lot about rabbit sex, or any animal sex really, but they were just tiny…
"Wait, do you even know any poetry?" Stiles looked at Jackson like he'd never seen him before. That couldn't be a thing. Jackson secretly loved poetry or wrote poetry and had written something for—
"No. God no. I was hoping it was the sex thing and not the poetry thing. I'm more than capable of bringing a tent down, but I haven't memorized the collected works of Elizabeth Barret Browning."
"But you know who she is because…"
"Because I have perfect grades in all my classes, of which English is one."
"I don't know, that sentence didn't sound gramma—"
"Stiles."
Jackson took a step closer forcing Stiles to lean back and look up, otherwise Stiles's head would be like directly at the level of his crotch. Which wasn't necessarily bad because being face to junk with Jackson wasn't a bad place to be. There were people who would probably be willing to hide Stiles's body to get a chance to be in that position.
"Why did you say the second thing?" Stiles asked.
Jackson's eyebrows furrowed. "Fucking like rabbits? That's a pretty comm—"
"No, the thing about laying out under the stars."
"You have a telescope in your room. You know, like literally no one else does except for people in movies."
"You noticed things in my room?"
"Yeah. I notice things…" Jackson took a step back, reaching up to rub the back of his neck. "You have a lot of stuff in your room. Telescope, some sort of animated snowboarder, a pair of... uh…"
Stiles tilted his head. A pair of what? Dirty underwear on his floor. Yeah probably. Every single high school dude probably had dirty underclothes on their floor. Well everyone who wasn't Jackson, Jackson's room had been obsessive compulsive clean. He wondered if that was always a thing or if Jackson had cleaned up for their date or… oh. Oh!
"Handcuffs!" Stiles hopped to his feet, causing Jackson to take a couple of steps backwards. "You're talking about the handcuffs hanging near my bed, right?"
Jackson almost fell into the fire trying to turn away, quickly course corrected and found himself almost chest to chest with Stiles.
"Do you uhhh…" Stiles wasn't sure how to bring the topic up politely, so he figured he'd just barrel forward. "Do you have a thing for that?"
"T-thing?" Jackson stammered.
It was just about the most awesome thing Stiles had ever seen. Confident, arrogant, Jackson Whittemore fumbling his words because of Stiles Stilinski.
"You know. Handcuffs, restraints, collars."
Even in the flickering firelight Stiles could see Jacksons chest, neck and ears turning slightly red. Jackson opened and closed his mouth a couple times until it finally snapped shut with an audible click of his teeth.
