Part II
Jackson
New York City, New York
May 12th 2012
Sweat was dripping from every pore of Jackson's body as he jogged his way along the treadmill, increasing the speed and turning up the encouraging dance music that was blasting from his headphones. All of downtown was spread out before him beyond the safety of the huge panes of glass that covered one wall of the gym, the city lighting up as the sun started to vanish, casting an orange glow over the tiny snippets of the Hudson that he could see through the towers of glass and steel that dominated his view.
He ran, and ran, and ran, never stopping for water or to catch his breath; he knew he had to keep up his body if he wanted his life to stay the way it was. Jackson was notorious in certain circles of New York. Known for his looks, his wealth, and his inability to say no to a party, he hit the clubs five nights a week and spent the other two with his boyfriend Jack.
Jack and Jackson, everyone knew them and everyone loved them. Hoards of cocaine addled models agreed that they were the perfect couple, gushing about how they wished the two of them were straight before they would return to a martini and an investment banker. Jackson grinned at the thought of their friends. Acquaintances would probably be a more apt term.
Jackson had started modelling at fifteen, leaving his boarding school against the express wishes of his father, jumping on a plane to the big apple and never looking back. By the time he was twenty he had dated most of the models in the city, only two being serious relationships; one girlfriend who had broken his heart, and one boyfriend whose heart he had broken. He and Jack had been dating for three years now, and he had never been happier.
Thoughts of his boyfriend flitted trough his mind as he hopped off the treadmill and headed for the showers, giving everyone who mattered a friendly nod or a wink. Jack was twenty four, a favourite muse of many of his mothers favourite designers, known for his alabaster skin, six foot four frame, and cut glass cheekbones. He had wooed Jackson with a meal on top of his building, taken him about clubbing for the next three weeks, and hoarded him with expensive gifts before he finally got him into bed. They hadn't left each other since.
He could hear his phone vibrating as he patted his body dry after the shower, pulling open the locker and smiling at the picture on the screen, "I was just thinking of you." He told Jack while slipping into some of the clothes he had been paid with for runway work.
"Me too," Jack replied half-heartedly, "listen, we need to talk." Jackson panicked slightly, those four words were never a good sign. They were how he broke up with his last boyfriend, and the one before that, and the one before that.
"It's my birthday meal tonight, can't it wait?" Jackson groaned theatrically, hoping his boyfriend didn't want to talk about anything serious. It was a small mercy that he knew it wasn't the breakup speech, Jack was infatuated with him.
He could hear Jack breathing down the phone, thinking of a response. He had probably forgotten all about the birthday meal, dates weren't his thing. "I suppose. We have to talk tomorrow, though. Where are you?"
"Just getting in a cab now," Jackson replied, hopping into the yellow car and directing the driver to his apartment. He was talking as they rode, but Jackson didn't listen, he had come to realise the cab drivers just liked the sound of their own voice.
"I'm at a shoot, so I'll just meet you there."
"Love you." Jackson said, a smile on his face.
"You too." Jack replied quietly. Probably bad cell reception.
The cab took him through the mess of streets to his apartment at a pace that anyone but a New Yorker would have complained about; to Jackson it was pretty fast. He stopped off early and got a frozen non fat coffee and a bag of carrots, munching through the little orange sticks as he got ready for his party.
Twelve of his best friends were taking him out to dinner to celebrate the big twenty five, booking the table two months in advance; the place was impossible to get into. He grinned at what good friends they were to think of him so early in advance as clothes were stripped off and dumped around the room, rooting through the overflowing closets to find something. He stopped to admire his perfect body in the mirror, flexing his abs and biceps with a grin plastered across his face. Hopefully, he thought as his eyes fell down to his crotch, Jack would have a special birthday treat for him tonight.
"Sorry I'm late!" Jackson said, giving Lydia, one of his oldest and best friends, a grin as he arrived at the restaurant twenty minutes late. Jackson was always late.
"Finally, we've been waiting!" She said, gesturing vaguely to one of her friends, a blonde model with dead looking eyes and an appetite for chain smoking. A giggle escaped his lips as he realised most everyone else was even later than he was. Typical.
Jackson followed her inside the exclusive little eatery, pushing through the crowds of diners who were waiting for a table and up the few steps to where the black maitre d', who was thinner and more striking than any model, was talking absently into two phones at once.
"Table for Whittemore." Lydia told her through pursed lips, wondering if the girl already had an agent. Lydia was a booker for a top agency, spending her days prowling street corners looking for the next big face. A successful model from the age of fourteen, she had retired when she hit the grand old age of twenty three, turning her keen mind to the other side of the business instead.
She gave them a smirk, hoping they weren't on the list so she could humiliate them. When she recognised her own handwriting on the nine o'clock booking she shot them daggers and escorted them to the mammoth, circular table. Half of the chairs were a curved booth of leather, which Jackson slipped into, scooting across to the middle so he could be dead centre. Lydia sat beside him, while her friend sat on one of the six chairs that surrounded the other side of the table, pulling out a BlackBerry and typing away furiously.
He ordered a beer and a vodka straight up, while Lydia commanded that a cosmopolitan be brought over, and the other girl – who Jackson didn't even know the name of, he reflected with a snort – ordered whatever had the least calories.
"So, how was your day?" Lydia asked, finally putting down the phone that was repeatedly vibrating with new emails and turning to face her friend, her engaged-and-interested expression finally on.
"Good I guess, I took it off. Went for breakfast with Jack, went to the park, went for lunch, went to visit Marie, then the gym." He took a swig of beer and downed the vodka, leaving the ice all alone as he planted the glass back on the table. "You find anyone decent?"
Lydia bristled slightly at his question, smoothing back her auburn her and taking a breath, "Oh – not particularly. Though, I did see something..."
"You saw something? Someone?" Jackson asked, his eyebrows raised and his mouth screwed up. He hoped she wasn't doing cocaine again, that brief period had really sent her out of it.
"It's totally screwed up," She assured him, putting her face uncomfortably close to his own to give the words some dramatic flair. "Basically, I woke up this morning ready for a great day -"
"Hey bitch!" Lydia was cut off by the sound of Marie, who approached with a drink already in her hand, towering over everyone in her heels and looking impossibly tiny in black leather. He was kind of glad she had cut Lydia off, her stories were always so long winded, starting hours before the actual event that she was talking about.
"Hey!" Jackson scooted out and hugged her, feeling the ribs digging into his skin. He hardly thought twice about it, that was normal for their circle.
"God I was completely stuck uptown, can you believe they're repaving Park? My cab was just sat there, I had to get out and walk down to Fifth." She grumbled, sitting down beside Lydia, knowing that Jackson would want his boyfriend next to him. "Hey, Sylv, how you doing?"
The bored looking blonde at the opposite side of the table looked up, her eyes dull and bloodshot. "Huh? Who are you? I'm just waiting for the birthday girl."
"Dumb bitch," Marie screamed with laughter, throwing her head back to expose perfect teeth, her black mane of hair flying out behind her. The three of them got to talking about their days, Lydia's story forgotten as the table filled up.
A seven foot basketball player sat beside Marie with his latest girlfriend on his arm, a southern model with social ambitions higher than even Jackson's mother. One of his best friends, a two hundred pound drag queen who moonlighted as a performance artist, sat beside Jack, who arrived just before him, looking surly and beautiful as he gulped down endless tumblers of whisky. The model of the moment sat beside Marie, snapping pictures and uploading them to her Twitter for her fans, while a painfully thin male model grumbled about not being able to smoke inside from the other side of the table. An ebony beauty who had came to New York to be an actress but had ended up as a premier party planner downed martinis and flirted with the stockbrokers at the next table, ignoring her athlete boyfriend who Jackson knew from his local track.
The night continued on similar lines to those it had began with; everyone talking about themselves and bitching about the other diners, who gazed over at the table of beauties with jealousy burning in their eyes. Jackson talked mainly to Lydia, Marie, and the two other athletes at the table, realising that he really didn't have that much in common with anyone else.
"Are you okay? You've been quiet." Jackson asked, twining his fingers through the pale, bony fingers of his boyfriend under the table.
Jack ground his teeth and gave him a weak smile, "Yeah, sorry. Just not feeling myself." He looked awkward and uncomfortable, Jackson noted as he looked him over. Undeniably sexy and hot came to mind too.
"I love you." He whispered, planting a kiss on the side of his face, his heart fluttering when Jack turned his head to capture his lips, their tongues snaking into each others mouths without a care of what anyone else thought.
"Mm, what I wouldn't give for those lips!" Antwon, or Antwon Antoinette as he liked everyone to call him, mumbled through pursed, glossed lips, throwing his blonde weave back to slap a neighbouring diner across the face.
"You had them once," Jack joked, giving him a playful punch.
"Oh what a night it was hunnie," Antwon ran his hands up and down Jack's substantial biceps, "just me, this hunk, and a bottle of tequila." He and Jackson had ended up making out over a game of spin the bottle on his friends seventeenth birthday party in a Lower East Side walk-up, and they had been friends ever since. He was probably his oldest friend after Lydia.
Everyone hooted with laughter as the night continued, the table loaded up with salads and vodka as they picked at their food. It wasn't like they came out to eat, people only waited so many months to get in places to see and be seen, muttering to each other about famous socialites, models, actresses and athletes as they came and went.
"Thanks for a great night!" Jackson yelled from the street outside the restaurant two hours later, where eight of the twelve people who had been at their table were smoking. Jackson dragged on a Marlborough he had accepted from Jack, while Lydia waved her hand in front of her face to fight the smoke and talked into her phone. Rick, the athlete from the track, another of his closest friends, gave him a firm handshake before bundling his girlfriend into a cab, who was still hanging out of the window furiously puffing on her smoke, the shouts of the driver echoing down the busy street as they drove away.
Antwon and Marie blew him kisses from the open window of the taxi as it roared down the street, headed for the hot new club. Antwon had his head stuck out of the car, a rainbow coloured wig he had thrown over his blonde tresses flowing in the wind, the glittery blush on his cheeks catching the lights of the city. He would have usually gone with them, but he was going home with Jack. He preferred it that way, anyway.
"I love you, you know." Jackson muttered quietly, his words very slightly slurred from all the beer and vodka, letting his hand furrow between Jack's legs and squeeze his crotch.
Jack looked like he was about to say something, but he just ground his hips a little, his lips parted, wrapping his arm around Jackson's shoulders in the back of the cab.
"Do I get my birthday present tonight?" Jackson asked, the words low and husky, leaning in to kiss Jack's smooth, white, neck. He knew how crazy he was about the neck.
Jack paid the cab driver and pulled the other man out onto the street, twining his fingers in the dark blonde hair and pressing his lips down on the wanting, pink mouth before him. "Of course." With a grin he dragged Jackson into their building.
Clothes were littering the hallway, the front room, and the bedroom by the time they reached the bed, both fully naked, grinding their bodies into each other on the impossibly high thread count sheets. Jackson revelled in how lean and broad Jack was while he kissed down the endless amounts of pale skin, taking his nipples into his mouth, his fingers scratching against the coarse black hairs around the base of his arousal as he pumped up and down. Jack's fingers were all over him, in his hair, on his back, touching his nipples.
He was flung around so Jack was on top, blocking out the light with his huge, broad shoulders, collarbone sticking out like a sharp weapon beneath his tensed neck. When he felt his birthday present inside him he dug his nails into the taut skin covering the smooth back, looking up as shaggy black hair fell around his chiselled face, thrusting slowly into his boyfriend with his eyes screwed up, pleasure written all over those handsome features.
"Ohh – shit, I'm coming." Jackson shouted when he felt his balls tighten and his abs tense with the force of the orgasm that was building up in his stomach, pulling Jack's chest down on top of him as he came, coating them both with his lust while Jack came inside of him, his head thrown back with a huge grin spread across his face.
"Happy birthday." Jack mumbled, resting his damp hair on Jackson's chest; the man beneath him falling almost instantly into a deep, blissful sleep.
"Oh – fuck!" Jackson screamed, his orgasm unable to be kept at bay any more through the force of Jack's thrusts. A white mess added to the congealed product of last nights lovemaking on his stomach as he came, lips pressed against Jack's, fingers entwined in the shaggy black hair.
Jackson gave his boyfriend a grin, pulling him towards the shower for part three of his present, but Jack shrugged him off, cleaning himself hurriedly before he escaped the warmth of the shower and started doing crunches in the living room.
It didn't bother Jackson too much, he liked the shower to himself anyway. The enormous, multiple head steam shower with one stream of water that threatened to make him hard again as it shot up from the ground and cleaned his insides. It had been what sealed the deal when considering moving into Jack's apartment two years ago. Well, that and the gorgeous hunk who was waiting for him.
"Jackson, we need to talk." Jack's frame had appeared in the doorway to the bathroom, a door they always left open; there was hardly an inch of modesty with two male models.
"Wanna join?" Jackson asked with a grin, his hands roaming slowly down his own body.
Jack gave him a look, a look full of lust and desire, but there was something else too it, Jackson noted with dread, "No. Jackson, look, this is really hard to say – I don't know..."
"Shall we go to Cipriani for lunch today?" Jackson asked absently, not wanting to hear whatever emotional conversation Jack was pushing.
"Jesus Christ, can't you ever just stop? I need to talk to you." Jack ran his fingers through the wet mess of his hair, throwing his head back and breathing an exasperated sigh. Jackson hated talking. It was so boring, always reminding him of the father-son talks he had been unwillingly dragged into growing up, well, whenever he saw his father that is; it was seldom that he had left his slew of boarding schools to return to Beacon Hills.
"Jackson – I can't do this any more." Jack grunted, his words almost forcing a shocked Jackson to slip over.
"Okay, okay, sorry. We can talk. Look, this is me – talking." Jackson put one hand on each of Jack's biceps, squeezing and kneading at the muscle to try and make him relax.
"I'm serious," Jack shrugged him off, turning to the bedroom and putting a shirt on so he wasn't exposed any more. Jackson wondered why such a beautiful body ever had to be covered up, there should be rules that hunks couldn't wear shirts. "I wanted to talk yesterday but I forgot it was your birthday. So I'm talking now. When I say I can't do this any more, I mean this." Fingers waved airily at the naked body of Jackson.
"You don't wanna have sex with me any more?" Jackson frowned, looking over his own body; the definition was unparalleled.
"I don't want to see you any more. I met someone." Jack at least had the grace to blush, training his eyes onto his feet. "You have to leave."
"What the fuck?" Jackson growled, his features furrowing into an angry mask. Without even thinking about what he was doing he extended an arm and socked Jack across the jaw, sending the other man flying into a wardrobe, the wood of its door cracking painfully as he connected with it.
Jack looked across, anger written across his face, leaning forward and smashing his much larger fist into Jackson's eye. Jackson's world span, seeing guilt on the face in front of him before he fell into a world of darkness.
"Come on sweetie, that's it." Very slowly and very painfully, Jackson opened his eyes, wondering why half of Lydia was a blurry mess.
"Wassamapen?" Jackson asked, hearing the words coming out of his mouth and trying to laugh. The way his cheeks raised when he smiled sent a searing pain down the left side of his face. A tentative hand came up to touch his eye, feeling the swollen, surely bruised flesh.
"Good job, Jack. You can leave now," Lydia turned her head to some unseen figure across the room, "asshole." She added to Jackson as an undertone. Lydia helped him from the bed, the world around him unfocused and blurry as he stumbled to the bathroom to examine himself.
"Fuck!" He yelled, seeing the dark blue and purple mess around his eye. His eyelid was swollen, the watery blue eye beneath struggling to see properly.
"Now I brought the doctor over, he promised it would heal and everything's fine. It apparently looks worse than it is." Lydia sounded like she didn't really believe it herself, taking a shocked Jackson's arm and leading him back to the bedroom. "I packed your things, you're coming with me. At least Jack had the sense to call me."
"Jack..." It came back to him then, the breakup, the fight, hitting Jack into the wardrobe and getting a black eye for his trouble. Inexplicably, he laughed.
"I'm glad you think it's funny, I had to leave a very promising new client to be here." Lydia grumbled as she grabbed a case of Jackson's clothes she had hurriedly packed and took him by the hand, leading him past a surly looking Jack who was furiously texting from the breakfast bar.
"You're a fucking asshole, you know." Jackson grunted in his direction as Lydia unlocked the door, glad to see a swollen red mark marring his defined jaw. He squashed his breaking heart down and replaced it with a burning anger. Jack was not going to see him cry. "I never wanna see you again, this is all your own fault! I was the best thing that ever happened to you, go back to being a fucking drug pusher you stupid cunt!" Jackson was craning his neck and pushing against a shocked looking Lydia, who had a vice-like grip on Jackson's arm as she dragged him beyond the threshold.
"Shut up!" She whispered furiously, dragging Jackson down the hall, trying to contain his flailing arms. Jack appeared in the doorway as they reached the end of the hall and waited for an elevator.
"Oh, coming for one last look?!" Jackson screamed when he noticed him, "Well too bad, you lost this – Fuck. You." It took a red faced Lydia a good twenty minutes to calm Jackson down, her wide eyes screaming for the cab driver to ignore her friends shouts as they roared uptown.
Her apartment was a plush ode to luxury on the Upper East Side, but right in that moment Jackson felt like the smashing it up.
"No – no!" Lydia screamed as he wrenched a Fabergé Egg from it's glass case and moved to throw it across the room. She caught the horrendously expensive little egg just before he could throw it, wincing as a lalique bowl shattered instead.
"Fucking ass!" Jackson yelled and screamed, entwining himself in the curtains as he attempted to drag them down.
"Drink this!" Lydia screamed as she returned to the living room and noticed Jackson wrapped up in her curtains, the pole that held them up dragged down, bits of plaster and paint matting Jackson's messy hair.
He took the bottle of vodka and started to down it, not bothering to get up from his hunched position on the floor, the plush curtains serving as a blanket as he ranted and raved about Jack all through the morning. He proceeded to get well and truly drunk, by the time three o'clock rolled around he was gone. Not that happy haze he got in when he went out, but really, really, drunk. So drunk that he started confessing sex secrets to a cringing Lydia, who laid him out on the floor and let him sleep it off for the rest of the day, a vodka bottle clutched to his heaving chest.
When he came to he felt like shit. Darkness permeated the apartment, yet shadows were being cast on the high walls by the bright lights of the city behind him, unable to be held at bay due to the fact he was currently wrapped in the curtains. A flurry of activity made him wince and shudder as lights came on, doors slammed, and Lydia crossed the room in a storm of auburn hair.
"Get up. You've had your mope, now I'm taking things into my own hands. There's no way I'm leaving you here -" She gestured to the impeccable apartment, the carpets marred with chunks of broken glass and the curtains a complete mess, "- after what you did, so you're coming with me. I got you a ticket, we're on the red-eye."
Jackson had no idea what was happening as Lydia's deft hands dragged him across the room and started stripping him of the clothes Jack had dressed him in that morning, replacing them with comfortable travel attire and thrusting a bottle of water into his hands. She dragged two suitcases behind her all the way down to the cab, but Jackson didn't ask where they were going or what was happening, all he wanted to do was sleep.
His head was throbbing as they stood in the terminal at Le Guardia, boarding a flight that he couldn't make out through his blurry left eye. A bristling Lydia ignored him every step of the way, blacking out the world behind an eye mask and putting wax earplugs in so she didn't have to listen to his questions and protests.
Three more vodkas gave him enough of a buzz to perk up a little, but when a snooty attendant told him his travel companion had informed the staff that he was to be given no more alcohol his spirits fell once more. Instead he slept, trying not to think of Jack as the plane landed at LAX and they changed to a much smaller plane that didn't even have a first class carriage, forcing the two of them to cringe in economy.
Without warning, his heart lurched, his stomach did a somersault, and he groaned. He saw Beacon Hills for the first time in five years, spread out underneath the shaky wings of the plane, a tiny spread of houses in the middle of the endless acres of woods that closed in on the town oppressively.
"Home." Lydia raised her eyebrows as she gazed out of the window, wondering why she was back here at all. She wanted buildings and lights and noise, and so did Jackson. Collecting their baggage took a while, and by the time they left the airport it was nine in the morning, birds chirping in the sunlight, happy, carefree families embracing outside the airport. The two of them looked like the grim reaper's assistants in their all black outfits, Lydia's hair a mess from the journey, Jackson's eye getting a darker and darker colour as the hours rolled by, the smell of alcohol seeping from his pores.
In the back of the town car Lydia had ordered for them, Jackson pulled out his phone and dialled the one person he liked in Beacon Hills.
"Jackson! Long time no see!" Allison said as she picked up on the fifth ring, sounding a little rushed.
Jackson gazed through the tinted windows of their car, the white, storybook houses growing in number, smiling pedestrians stopping on street corners to talk to each other, the endless stream of sun lighting up the town to give it a happy sheen. He let out a long, deep groan and sighed. "Hey, I'm home."