Archive of Our Own

Jack couldn’t, by and large, be considered a big fan of long-term relationships. No matter how good it started, at a certain point it always started to fall apart for him. Incidentally, he had also never been crazy for short-term relationships. Even as a young man, the idea of getting sweaty and naked with a stranger was just as likely to make him cringe as get sprung. Jack liked his life when it wasn’t messy, and controlled by the whims of other people.

He had a hundred reasons, in his head, why relationships didn’t work for him. He often swapped the meanings around in the mornings with his word-of-the-day calendar, finding new and creative ways to phrase how marriage had failed him, never quite able to let the thoughts just sit quietly at the edges of his mind.

Something about Holland March made Jack forget—or as close as he could forget—all these protestations.

“Get down!” Jack bellowed, throwing himself out from behind his paltry cover to tackle Holland to the ground, the both of them rolling behind a stone park bench.

Gunfire peppered above their heads, splintering bark and raining shells and leaves onto them, from the trees. People were still screaming as they fled, polluting the air with their panic, the gunfight had been so sudden. Holland said, “Jesus!” loud and falsetto in Jack’s ear, and Jack pulled back by habit to pat his hands down Holland’s chest.

Holland was always screaming, but he was always getting hurt, too. Jack pulled his hands out from beneath Holland’s jacket dry and blood-free. “You okay?” he said, to confirm.

Wide-eyed, Holland nodded, and so Jack kicked away from him and poked his head out from the bench.

One of the masked men was still pelting bullets over their bench, but the other one was hustling an unconscious redhead into an unmarked van parked haphazardly on the curb. It was their client’s husband, his suspicious behavior striking her to believe he was having an affair, when in reality the behavior had been covering up the guzzling blackmailing he was being put through. The blackmailing was about an affair, of course, but he’d somehow hidden that one much better. Jack and Holland had been expecting to find him canoodling in the park, not having a terse conversation with two armed blackmailers. Jack and Holland had never been great at de-escalating to begin with, and Holland accidentally flashing his gun was not incredibly persuasive to the panicking blackmailers to peaceably surrender.

Their low expectations for the case was why they were so woefully underprepared. These days, Jack usually rolled around town solving petty crimes with just Holland and his brass knuckles. He really didn’t need much more than that.

He reached down and slapped at Holland’s arm, sucking his head back into the shelter of the stone bench before the lunatic spitting bullets at them could see the easy target he was making of himself. “March, gun,” Jack said, and without anything else said Holland was struggling to free his gun from the holster beneath his suit jacket and pressing it into Jack’s hand.

He was shaking, a little bit, his hair all in disarray over his forehead, blue eyes huge and a little glassy. He was still piss-poor at handling the shock of sudden violence that his career often dictated, as if it could keep being surprising after all this time. Jack let out a breath, and thought to himself that it would be a cold day in L.A. before he let this man get shot on his watch. What would he tell Holly? God, they’d been doing this together for less than six months and Jack already thought they needed to retire.

“Stay down,” he told Holland, speaking brusque and right into Holland’s face. Holland was good at taking orders—(from Jack)—but his appetite for getting himself into trouble constantly kept Jack on his toes. He was a handful on a good day, on a case that didn’t involve full-out gunfights. “I mean it, March,” Jack rumbled, and then he popped his head out around the edge of the bench again, his elbows deep in the dirt, and loosed a few shots himself.

The masked maniac was still firing at the trees. Jack put two bullets in his left leg, one barely clipping the side of his calf and the other sinking just above his ankle, like Jack was a goddamn Chihuahua. The man screamed, dropping his gun as he fell to the ground, and his compatriot dropped the redheaded man onto the asphalt and shot wildly in the general direction of Jack and Holland without any real aim.

Almost out of the woods, Jack thought to himself. He turned, already talking, to Holland, saying, “Got one, but we have to be—,”

Holland was nowhere in sight.

“Careful,” Jack sighed to himself. And, with feeling, “Fuck.”

“Fuck you, asshole!”

Fucking Holland. Jack rolled out from behind the bench, gun up, ready to kill or be killed, but before anybody had the chance to shoot, Holland threw an ice cream cart down a small grassy hill, which picked up momentum in a blur, spitting grass and small rocks beneath the big colorful wheels, and slammed gracelessly into the second blackmailer. The blackmailer went down shouting.

“Ha!” Holland whooped. He waved exuberantly at Jack.

“Christ,” Jack muttered, running across the beat-down path. He kicked a silver pistol away from the blackmailer’s hand, aimed his own gun at the guy’s eyes. “Don’t move,” Jack advised him.

His legs were all tangled up in the spokes of the wheels. He looked balefully at Jack, and let his head drop to the grass with his hands up.

Jack took a deep breath, letting the adrenaline ease back to a hot, slippery pulse just beneath his skin. Still in reach, in case he needed it—you really never know, with a career path like this—but for the moment letting his hackles fall.

Panting, Holland loped up to Jack’s side, throwing an arm over Jack’s shoulders.

“Another one in the books for the Nice Guys,” he said, lit up with triumph.

“Not yet,” Jack said darkly. His shooting arm was still steady. “Call the cops.”

Holland waved a lazy hand behind him, towards the masse of screaming crowds. “Somebody will have by now.” He thumped Jack’s shoulder with his hand, grinning like a loon. “So, bar?”

Jack frowned at him. “It’s two in the afternoon,” he said.

Holland shrugged. “So, bar?” he repeated.

“Yeah, right,” Jack said. He gestured towards Mr. Lynch, collapsed halfway on the sidewalk and halfway into the parking lot. His red hair was a shock against the asphalt. “Go make sure our client isn’t dead.”

Scoffing, Holland withdrew his arm. “You always ruin my fun,” he complained, which Jack felt was deeply unfair. Nonetheless, Holland jogged off towards Mrs. Lynch’s (maybe soon ex-) husband, crouching down to hold the back of his hand against Lynch’s parted mouth. “Breathing,” Holland yelled back, with the tone of a teenager being forced to unload the dishwasher.

Jack licked his lips. He let his shoulders unwind a little. “Yeah,” he said, “all right. Not too bad.”

“What stakes ‘ve you got in it?” said the blackmailer beneath the cart. His friend was still groaning into the grass, clutching his leg. Jack felt a little guilty about that. Just a little. “Let us run,” the man said.

“I don’t think so,” Jack said calmly. He cracked his neck. “Maybe before you shot at us. Maybe.” He jerked his gun towards Holland, who was dragging Lynch into the softer grass, cursing at his unresponsive body. “He’s a father, for God’s sake.”

The blackmailer laid his head back again. “Worth a shot,” he sighed.

It didn’t take long after that for the police to show up. The flashing red-and-blue lights streaked over the trees, reflecting bright on Holland’s blonde hair as Holland took shelter behind Jack to light up a cigarette.

The heady curtain of smoke drifted by Jack’s face, tied together with Holland’s overly-strong cologne and the slightly sour tang of his stress sweat. Jack handed Holland his gun back as discreetly as he could while the cops dealt with the blackmailers. Squad car for one, ambulance for the other. Jack didn’t technically have a license to carry—yet, he kept saying—and he wasn’t rearing at the bit for the police to know he’d been illegally using one a few minutes ago. (Or that he illegally used a gun often, whether it was from Holland’s hand or stolen from a bad guy or from Jack’s private stash in his apartment over the comedy club.)

Holland blew out a silver plume of smoke. He sized up the side of Jack’s face. “So,” he said, “home?”

“Have to give our statements,” Jack grunted, nodding towards the cops.

Groaning, Holland tilted his head back to the sky. “Get our payment, too,” he said off-hand.

“And that,” Jack agreed. 

He wasn’t looking forward to telling Mrs. Lynch that not only had her husband been cheating, but he’d been being blackmailed, too. Unfortunately, it was that or walk away from the case unpaid. They almost never had good news to deliver to their clients. Believe it or not, if somebody was desperate enough to shell out $500 in one sitting to two barely-legal detectives-slash-bruisers, they were usually right about their partner cheating or their missing friend being dead. Jack cracked his knuckles and waded up to the nearest cop, ready to get it all over with. As easy and reliable as the sunrise, Holland followed behind him, never more than a half-step away.

For some bizarre reason, Holland insisted on changing before they had gone to see their client. He’d come back out of his room still shrugging on a new suit jacket, this one a pale blue, and not green-smeared by rolling around in the grass or dark at the extremities with sweat. Jack lifted an unimpressed eyebrow at him, still in his stained and slightly torn yellow Hawaiian, and then they’d been driving to the client’s house.

The wide, shocked set of her eyes, darting over to Jack’s disheveled appearance and then away again, made him vaguely realize why Holland had wanted to change. But still, why bother? They were being paid to get into scuffles, weren’t they, after all? What would be the point in hiding that their dangerous job was dangerous?

“Thank you,” Mrs. Lynch said. She was clutching the envelope of letters, photographs, and bank statements that Jack and Holland had managed to scrounge together to form a convincing case of his affair and his blackmail. “I’m sure this will be enough for any court.”

“Yeah, too bad he’s got nothing left to split with, huh?” said Holland idly. Jack elbowed him sharply, and Holland made a soft sound of protest, looking down at Jack with bewilderment. For such a charming guy, Jack often found himself having to shut Holland up for his own good.

“Yes,” Mrs. Lynch said, acidic. She nodded to Jack, assuming—as most of their clients did—that he was the one with some sense. “Thank you both, again. I hope that’s enough to cover it all.”

“It’s plenty, ma’am,” said Jack, gruff and polite. He inclined his head to her. “We appreciate the bonus, and really, don’t worry about it. We don’t charge extra for gunfights.”

It was supposed to be a joke, but Mrs. Lynch blanched a little, going pale high in her cheeks.

At Jack’s side, though, Holland laughed beneath his breath. “We’ll be on our way now,” Jack told Lynch. “You have a good night.”

“You as well,” the slightly baffled woman said, as Jack took Holland by the elbow and led them both out of her house.

“Can I say it now?” said Holland, taking the stone steps down the driveway two at a time, whiny and as if they had been in the middle of a conversation.

Mildly, Jack replied, “Go ahead.”

“Thank you,” said Holland. He bumped his shoulder into Jack’s. “Another case solved, courtesy of the Nice Guys. We’re on a fuckin’ roll, man.”

Jack’s blood poured smooth as good liquor through his veins, warm and satisfied. As much as he complained about the high action of being a P.I., he loved it and he knew he did. Holland grinned at Jack from the corner of his mouth, and he clearly knew it, too. Jack shrugged, trying not to smile. He said, “Sure looks like it.”

“Doesn’t it?” cried Holland. He slid into the passenger seat of his own car, winging the keys at Jack’s chest. “I’m expecting you to have a drink with me, when we get home.”

Jack rounded the hood and settled into the driver’s. Holland was always jittery after the more dangerous cases, and it was just safer for Jack to drive. His hands were always steady.

He put the key in the ignition.

“I mean it,” Holland told him. “It’s not every day we get shot at. At least one.”

It was usually just a matter of principle that Jack denied drinking with Holland—lord knew a drunk in company was double the danger—but he had a point, Jack thought. Surviving was always a cause for celebration. Jack couldn’t find a reason to say no, so instead he just said, “Sure. One.”

“Yes,” Holland hissed, pumping his fist. 

Jack pulled away from the curb with a squeal.

The golden-colored street lights flashed over the windshield in warm spots, bulbs glowing from their fancy wrought-iron canopies. It was nearing dusk, lamps flicking on in the windows of the flowerbox, faux lawn high-middle-class suburban houses around them. Holland's face, backlit by the setting sun, was half-hidden in shadow, illuminating in short bursts as he struggled to light his cigarette in the wind of his perpetually top-down convertible.

After he finally got it to light, the ember of the butt glowing faintly in the half-dark, he watched Jack drive from the corners of his eyes. Clearly trying to be stealthy, but failing, as he did with most things. It was a pity that Jack found it incredibly endearing. Maybe it had to do with the resilience—after all, Holland never did stop trying—but Jack was afraid that a fair amount of it was due to Holland's stupid cute face.

There was a pinch between Holland's eyebrows, creasing his tanned summer skin. Jack breathed out slow, trying to work through the last of the fading adrenaline. He'd always thought himself a quick sort of guy, but he had trouble keeping up with Holland at the best of times. One second it was classic '30s horror flick screaming, an inch away from death and wringing his vocal chords to their limits like a wet rag, and the next it was all rolling eyes and glib little quips, like it was all already behind him.

“What?” Jack said. He took a sharp turn.

“What?” Holland said right back. He turned his head away, fumbling his cigarette, nearly dropping it into his lap, his ears glowing red. The leather squeaked beneath him as he shifted in his seat, wiping a palm on the suede of his pants.

Half of Jack’s mouth ticked into an unwilling smile. Holland was so heartbreakingly obvious, Jack almost felt bad for him. Sometimes, the urge to take pity and swoop down—grab Holland by the tie, or the colorful lapel—and just plant one on him was almost too strong to bear. But Jack wasn’t the sort of guy who liked convincing people. He’d never really been naturally charming. Jack had always preferred it when women approached him first, in bars.

He also couldn’t be sure whether Holland wanted him because he wanted him, or if it was because Jack was already there, steady and useful and safe. If it was only because of that, then it wasn’t worth the risk of losing the good thing they already had going, no matter how much Jack wanted him, too.

“You did good out there today,” Holland said around his cigarette, blowing out over the side of the convertible. They were picking up speed, heading into the neon downtown.

Jack blinked. “Yeah?” he said. “You did, too. Blindsided that guy with a damn ice cream cart.”

Holland slipped him a small, pleased smile. His eyes were dewy and very blue in the bright lights.

Jack pressed on the gas pedal a little harder. “Just one drink,” he reminded Holland.

Smoke drifted away in the wind. Holland leaned over the car’s door, closing his eyes. “Sure,” he said, still smiling.

Whiskey burned like crystallized amber in the back of Jack’s throat.

He tipped his head against the stiff back of Holland’s brown leather couch. The small cubes of ice at the bottom of his tumbler clicked against one another, lonely and loud. Jack lifted the glass, considering it, and considering where Holland was bent in the yellow kitchen pouring himself a sixth. Seventh? It was hard to keep track, what with Jack only two or three cups behind him.

“March,” he said, clearing his throat like a revving engine. “Maybe we call it a night.”

Holland glanced up at him, quickly, squirrely. His hair was falling out of its neat do again, hanging in strands over his eyes. His tie had disappeared at some point, and his paisley cream-colored shirt had a few too many buttons undone to be strictly polite company. Jack didn’t mind the look of him at all.

“March,” he said, again, softer.

“Yeah, I heard you the first time,” he muttered. He set the heavy bottle down loudly and threw his newest glass back, as if it were a shot, instead of being two fingers of fine whiskey. “Celebrating,” he said, dropping his glass into the sink and meandering back over to Jack.

He smelled like smoke and cologne, and a little like lingering sweat, when he flopped back into the leather on Jack’s right. Jack leaned forward to put his cup on the coffee table, trying to subtly get a whiff. Holland’s lack of smell was probably what guided him to wear such an ungodly amount of cologne, which usually followed him like a cloud of smog. At the end of the night, though, it wore down to a tolerable amount, smoky and woody and just a little bit sweet. Jack liked when the natural heat of Holland bled through beneath it, too, the warm, salty smell of his skin. He caught flashes of it, sometimes, when their heads bowed close together while taking cover in alleyways, or when, after defying the odds again, Holland leaned against Jack post-adrenaline rush, breathing fast and heavy for a few precious moments before he wrenched himself away (as if Jack would complain), usually scruffed up and covered in glass. He had a penchant for taking windows to the face that Jack didn’t approve of.

He did, however, like what it meant following the tail-end of a case; that Jack could crowd Holland into a lowly-lit bathroom and get in close and gentle, dabbing at cuts with Neosporin, directing Holland’s face with a dry, warm hand on the chin.

Holland’s eyes were unfocused, a little glossy, as he watched Jack. “Where’d’ya go, Jackson?” he said, slurring a little.

“Just thinking,” Jack said, leaning back again. The house was quiet and warm around them, empty, for the night, as Holly was off at Jessica’s, whose sister was apparently sleeping alone for once. The peacefulness was a little unnerving, truth be told, when Jack was more often used to being shot or shouted at in his day to day.

“We’re getting a good reputation, did you know that?” Holland said. He kicked his feet up on the coffee table, the smooth fabric of his pants going taut over his thighs. He wore clothes one size too small to be anything but provocative. “Getting real cases, too. Not just…fuckin’, old ladies and shit.”

“Don’t say ‘and shit’,” Jack replied by rote.

“Just say ‘fucking old ladies’,” Holland finished, and then sniggered like a pre-teen.

Jack rolled his eyes, but he was smiling, in the corners of his mouth.

His partner peeked at him, the whites of his eyes glazed in the rental’s yellowy lights. “That is good, right?” he said, his bravado suddenly stripped away. He sounded younger than he was. “It’s good money.”

He almost sounded defensive. Jack watched him right back, frank and curious. “It’s great,” he said. And it was. “Hell of a lot better than being a bruiser for hire.”

Holland relaxed back into the couch like his strings had been cut. He smiled goofily at Jack. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. It’s nice…um, it’s nice not working alone. Anymore. You know?”

Jack pat him, twice, on the shoulder, making Holland bounce against the leather couch cushions a little bit. He’d had never learned how to be anything but big and strong, and Holland was so slinky and fragile that it was hard not to shake him around whenever Jack touched him. “Don’t hurt yourself, March,” he said.

“Holland.” Jack blinked, and Holland licked his lips and said, “You know you can just call me Holland.”

“Right,” said Jack. He took his hand back. They were both sitting straight up in their seats, now, just staring at the other. Jack cleared his throat. “I know, Holland.”

Holland’s eyes slipped shut. He sighed, just a little, and then suddenly Jack had a lap full of him, pushing him back into his couch and demanding his attention, invading Jack’s nose and the whole of his vision and then his mouth, clumsy and wet and overexcited.

Jack’s hands flew to Holland’s waist, anchoring him, pulling him in close by instinct. Holland whined when their groins lined up, his legs spread either side of Jack’s thick thighs, knees digging into the leather of the couch. His hands tangled into Jack’s hair, pushing his head back, trying to get a good angle into the attack kiss. Jack pushed one of his hands up the tail of Holland’s shirt to the small of his back, his rough palm and Holland's smooth, warm skin. He tasted like cigarettes and whiskey. The heat and the weight of him made Jack feel like he could buzz right out of his own head, explode into a bunch of little sparks of light.

A breathless little moan squeezed out of Holland. Jack bit at his mouth, half from the sheer need to do so, half as a meek punishment for throwing himself at Jack like this with no warning, but Holland only moaned again, high and strangled in his throat. His back was arched like a whore. He ground, unsubtly, down against Jack’s thigh, breathing little explosive puffs against Jack’s mouth with every downwards shift.

“March,” Jack said, “Holland—what are you—,”

“Talk later,” Holland mumbled against his mouth. “Orgasms now.”

That was a good point, and yet, sense won out. Jack used his hand on Holland’s hip to hold him still, giving them both some breathing room.

“Please—,” Holland groaned, “I need—,”

His voice was thick with lust and alcohol, hips twitching like he was already out of control. Abruptly sobered, Jack shoved him away (admittedly, maybe a bit too hard), and Holland groaned, again, this one deeply unsexy, as he clattered back against the coffee table.

Holland blinked blearily up at Jack in the low light, all pink-faced and kiss-drunk. 

Not to mention the standard variety of drunk. “Jesus, Holland,” Jack said. “Are you kidding me?”

Holland flushed, his ears glowing. “I—,” he said. He tried again, “You—,”

Jack rubbed a hand over his face. He’d been waiting for Holland to grow the balls to make a move for the past month, and after all that time, he only wanted it when he was seven drinks deep. “Go to bed,” he said. “I’m sleeping on your couch. You got me drunk, you asshole.”

A few books and empty mugs fell to the floor as Holland scrambled up, a hand on the low table for balance. He suddenly couldn’t meet Jack’s eyes. “Sorry,” he mumbled, to the floor. “I’m—I’m sorry.”

“Go to bed,” Jack told him again. “We’ll talk about it in the morning.”

He couldn't look directly at Holland, either, the whiskey and some confusing knot of uncomfortable emotion churning together in his stomach. After a long, silent moment, Holland pushed out of his peripherals, stumbling down the hall and disappearing into his room with a too soft click of the closing door.

Harsh L.A. morning light fell in heavy yellow bars over Holland’s living room, between his dusty venetian blinds. A band of light striped just under Jack’s crotch, making his clothes uncomfortably warm. Another stripe fell right over his eyes.

Jack groaned, turning his face into the sticky back of the couch. Sleeping on leather was a nightmare in the summer. The denim of Jack’s jeans felt glued to his thighs, and there was drool crusted over the side of his face, up to his ear; not to mention the crick in his neck, at his age, from spending the night on a couch. This was exactly why he never stayed over at Holland’s.

Still groaning, Jack rolled to his feet, wiping the heel of his hand over his eyes. He stumbled into Holland’s bright yellow kitchen, absentmindedly powering up the coffee machine, wondering if he had time for a shower before Holland woke up. It wasn’t until he was pouring himself a mug that he caught sight of the oven clock and balked.

He cursed under his breath, abandoning the coffee to find his belt and shoes, hidden somewhere under the couch. It was nearly one in the afternoon. Jack never slept in to that degree.

In the hallway, Jack hesitated, his hand halfway in the small porcelain dish where Holland kept his spare house keys. In the quiet of the house, he could just barely hear Holland snoring softly down the hall. He hesitated for just a second longer, wavering like a candle flame in the foyer, before snatching up the keys and shouldering through the rentals bloodred front door.

The whisper of cash sliding against cash was just barely louder, in the lobby, than the muffled honking and men shouting back and forth to each other beyond the glass walls. Jack dropped the last twenty on the oil-stained counter and shoved his significantly lighter wallet back into his pocket.

"Thank you for choosing Mike's Auto Body and Repair," droned the bored-looking teenage cashier. He put the key to Jack's car on top of the bills, and Jack eagerly snapped it up.

He was sick of filling Holland's convertible with the fancy, more expensive high-grade fuel when he borrowed Holland's car, and he was even sicker of being driven around the city by Holland, who drove like a maniac. Jack drove like a lunatic, too, to be fair, but they were different breeds; California crazy felt far more reckless than Jack's New York City crazy. It was just Jack's luck that people kept shooting at their cars on cases, and that Jack's roughed-up little thing that had survived multiple cross-country drives was more susceptible to long-lasting damage. "Yeah, give Mike my regards," Jack muttered, swiftly pushing out of the heavy glass door and into the warm, slightly rank L.A. air.

Jack took a deep breath, filling his chest with the smog. He rubbed his thumb over the hard silver line of his car key, admiring the sleek, single pane of glass that made up his windshield, no longer spiderwebbed with cracks creeping out of jagged bullet holes. Idly, he wondered to himself how long it would last as he turned over the ignition.

There was a secondary reason that Jack had chosen Mike's to get his windshield replaced, when he had a mechanic closer to his apartment over the comedy club. It was a short drive from Holly's middle school.

While Jack poured out of the auto repair's parking lot, his bumper scraping over a steep dip from lot to road, he marveled at how drastically his life had changed that he was now working his schedule around that of a thirteen year old girl and her alcoholic, private investigator father. Jack couldn't help but wonder how the version of him from just last year would take the change.

As it was, the Jack of right now, mid-fall of '77, parked in the mostly-empty lot of a middle school and reclined his seat way back, taking out a creased and dog-eared novel to pass the half-hour before the last bell. Weirdly enough, it wasn't a total departure from what his life just recently used to be. Hanging around in school parking lots waiting for an underage girl to get out wasn't new, but the difference was that Jack wouldn't be punching anybody in the face for talking to her later. (Unless, of course, anybody skeevy talked to her. Jack wasn't beneath throwing hooks for or at the two Marches, respectively.)

So: Jack's thoughts on long-term relationships.

Historically, his fooling around with love got him burned more times than it didn't. Most recently, and notably, his ex-wife fucking behind his back with his own father; and the two of them more or less turning the rest of his family against him, too. Hell, it had been ages since he'd even seen his brother. The real tragedy of it was that Jack had genuinely thought that things were going good. Sure, he'd noticed that June had less time for him in the last year or so, that she was distracted more easily, but their sex life had been as strong as ever (which was to say, fairly average, with occasional bursts of energy), and they still had their weekly dates, still made time for each other. In hindsight, the shift in their relationship had been more obvious than he'd once thought, but he'd been in love with her. Enough so that it had been easy for him to put on blinders and keep driving a car that was a little bit on fire, for months, getting hotter with every passing day. The engine giving out and the whole thing going up in smoke had completely blindsided him at the time.

His spirited yet halfhearted forays into real relationships, before and after June, tasted more or less the same. Jack either got too invested, and was dumbstruck when it didn't work out, or he, for whatever reason, never could fully commit in the first place and wasn't surprised when it fizzled out.

He couldn't tell which way this thing he was nursing for Holland would go, yet. He couldn't help but think it would be the former; here he was, waiting to pick Holland's daughter up from school, while Holland slept away a hangover from the night before, when all he'd wanted was for Jack to touch his dick.

Even still, Jack couldn't stop himself. He was a runaway train with the brakes cut, and he couldn't even slow down. Every time Holland smiled, crooked and charming, it was like the tracks got steeper. Jack loved that he could be as rough and rude or as mild-mannered as he wanted and Holland would respond to whichever one with the same fast-mouthed, dry-eyed energy. Holland's cynicism made even Jack seem like a damn spring flower, but when Holland laughed or smiled or got to really show off, he threw the whole, sharp weight of himself into it, glowing from his hair to his fucking toes with life. He made Jack feel older and younger at the same time. Jack liked throwing himself into danger so he could push Holland behind him, Holland screaming his stupid head off in Jack's ear, and he loved when Holland caught onto a clue or an idea far faster than Jack ever could, lighting up with his discovery, so excited to see if he was right or not. The fact that he was wrong more than he was right didn't even put a damper on it. Every time he failed, Holland picked himself right back up—bruised, hungover, what have you—and tried again.

Jack wanted him so badly that it was embarrassing. All he could hope for was that Holland wouldn't one day wake up and think, what the hell is this 50 year old bruiser doing in me and my family's life? and throw Jack out on his heels. All he could do was squeeze out the most of the time he had before that happened.

He'd gotten so engrossed in his own thoughts, mechanically turning the pages of the novel without even skimming the text, that the loud, sharp slap on his window nearly made Jack jump out of his seat.

Jack squinted at Holly over the low sit of his reading glasses, unamused, through the glass. The younger March just grinned back at him, flouncing around the hood of his car to slide into the passenger seat like she belonged there, the door already unlocked for her.

"Hi, Mister Healy," she said, shoving her overpacked bag by her feet.

Folding up the book, Jack passed it to Holly to store it in the glove department. "Hey, kid," he said. "Good day?"

"As good as it can be," Holly said darkly. Her brief conversations with Amelia, way back when, had made her kind of an anarchist. She now thought that school was a microcosm of capitalism and dystopian civilization at large, and Jack and Holland weren't clever enough to change her mind about it.

"Is that guy still giving you trouble?" Jack struggled to place the name. "Greg?"

Holly clipped her seatbelt on, waving to one of her friends through the windows. Without Jack even realizing it, the lot had become a swarm of 6th and 7th graders, all bouncing around in too-big backpacks. "Craig," she corrected. "No, that thing you showed me last week really helped." She smiled guilelessly at him, and Jack couldn't help but smile back.

"Right, good," he said, warm with pride and trying not to show it. "Just don't bust people's faces unless you really have to, remember that."

"Of course." Holly almost sounded offended. "You can't solve everything with violence. That's not realistic."

Jack only grunted. It had worked so far for him. He backed out of his parking space, being careful not to run over any kids.

"Mister Healy," said Holly, smiling at him from the passenger seat, "can we get In-N-Out?"

"It's three p.m.," he told her.

But she only said, "Please?", and really, Jack couldn't say anything but, "Sure, kid," with a sigh that was drown out by Holly's big whoop! of excitement.

The tell-tale smell of cheap burgers and greasy fries swanned through the yellow kitchen of the March's rental. Holly sprawled homework and textbooks over the counter, which had been free of empty cans and bottles for a while now, perched on the edge of a barstool, munching on her cheeseburger and occasionally rapping her pencil against her math worksheet in frustration.

Jack picked at his over-salted, paper-thin fries, missing New York food for a bright, brief moment. You just couldn't get a good hot dog or pizza slice or, God fucking forbid, a good bagel in Los Angeles.

Of course, the smell of the food wasn't what drew Holland out from his bedroom down the hall. It was the sound of Holly and Jack talking, Jack offering ineffectual advice for her math sheet that Holly kept reminding him was outdated, which baffled Jack. Why would anybody change math? Wasn't it fine the way it was?

"Really?" Holland said, his forearm braced on the wall by his head. He was smiling, the smallest bit, at Holly, and trying to pretend he wasn't. He didn't look at Jack. "It's three-thirty in the afternoon. This is going to ruin your dinner, young lady."

"Maybe this is my dinner," Holly said, biting defiantly into her cheeseburger.

Holland pushed off the wall, and snatched a small handful of fries from her takeout carton.

"Hey!" Holly said, grabbing for the fries back, but they disappeared into Holland's mouth.

"Fry tax," he said solemnly, mouth full. "It's my dues for being your father."

Holly scoffed, putting her hand over the rest of them. "You didn't even buy this. Mister Healy did."

For the first time, Holland's gaze darted over to Jack. The affection and humor on his face slipped, revealing nervousness and trepidation in their places, and Jack realized that he was wearing a mask for Holly. "Guilty," Jack said, dusting the salt on his hands off on his jeans.

"Then Mister Healy is ruining his dinner, too," Holland said, his eyes sliding away.

"She said 'please', March, what was I supposed to do?"

The corner of Holland's mouth twitched upwards, like he was fighting a smile. He ruffled his hand through Holly's hair, ignoring how she scowled and swatted at him. "It's the March raw charisma," he said. "Runs in the blood."

"You've never said please in your life," Holly told him.

"And how much of my life do you think you've been around for?"

Holly turned up her little nose, her pinched face all haughty. "Enough," she said.

Holland rolled his eyes.

It was clear that they could bicker until the sun went down, but Jack didn't have the patience to wait out Holland's aversive eye contact and anxious half-comments for another minute. He cleared his throat, reminding them of his presence, and raised an eyebrow at Holland.

"I think we had something to talk about," he said, accidentally not making it sound like a question.

Holland paled, and his mouth set into a grim line. "Okay," he muttered, "fine, yeah. In the backyard, please," with the last word directed at Holly.

His daughter rolled her eyes, the same way that Holland did. Jack couldn't resist a smile at the sight.

He inclined his head to Holland, who pushed his hands into his pockets and strolled, faux-casual, to the back porch. Jack followed with no small degree of unease. He wasn't a detective, not really. He had no idea what Holland was thinking, at any given time, and the unfortunate reality of that was that Holland never seemed to feel like sharing. The majority of the personal facts that Jack had learned about Holland over the last few months were all from Holly, not from the man himself. Jack didn't even know if Holland was aware that Jack knew some of the things he did.

In any order, it might not matter in a few minutes.

Jack clicked the sliding glass door closed behind them, sizing Holland up. He was dressed for the day, but bore the mark of a bad night's rest. It looked like someone had drawn kohl beneath his blue eyes, and the line of his body was ragged, tired and tense. Holland rolled his shoulders.

"Are we gonna fight?" Jack asked, wearily.

"Depends." Holland scrutinized Jack.

He waited a moment, but Holland didn't elaborate. "On?" Jack said, already growing tired of Holland's reticence.

"Whether or not you called the cops."

Jack laughed. After a moment, when it was clear Holland wasn't joking, he almost laughed again. "March, sodomy hasn't been illegal for going on two years now," he told him, just in case Holland didn't know.

Surprisingly, Holland went bright red from his collar to his ears. "That's not—," he hissed, darting a look over Jack's shoulder as if Holly could hear him from inside. "Don't say sodomy, Jesus." He looked away, still glowing, the most flustered Jack had ever seen him.

"What do you want me to say?" asked Jack, half genuine.

"I don't know." Holland scowled into the middle distance, as if the line of trees behind the rental had done him personal wrong. "I'm sorry, okay? I was drunk. I wasn't thinking. We can just... move on, we don't have to do the whole thing."

Jack felt it like a swift punch to the stomach. "Right," he said, after a long beat of silence. His voice sounded thick, and felt like sludge; he cleared his throat and tried again. "Right. Fine. Just ignore it, sure. I can do that."

Like a wanted man, Holland peered at Jack from the corners of his eyes. "Just, if you're going to hit me, at least don't do the face. Holly will ask questions."

It felt like they were having two very different conversations. "Why the hell would I hit you?" asked Jack, bewildered.

"Because I kissed you!" Holland shouted, and the words echoed in the empty pool and the concrete backyard. He immediately put his face in his hands, seeming to struggle internally for a second. Holland pushed his fingers through his hair, staring at the ground, and said in a more appropriate tone, "I got—carried away. For a second last night, I thought..." He laughed dryly, the sound anything but amused, and went on, "but I was wrong. If you're pissed, just tell me, or we can both do the smart thing and pretend it never happened."

"The smart thing." Jack watched Holland evenly. A few things were starting to tentatively piece together in his mind. This whole time, Holland had been so obvious that Jack assumed it was an open secret, the same way that Jack constantly staring at Holland's mouth—(and ass, admittedly)—was an open secret. Maybe he'd been wrong on both accounts. It seemed like Holland wasn't watching either of them very closely. "But not the right thing."

"What the hell are you talking about, man?" Holland eyed him, still gaunt-faced and dogged.

"You're a shit detective, do you know that?" Jack said.

Holland spluttered.

"I've been wanting to kiss you for five months," Jack told him.

The weariness on Holland's face washed out with shock, wiped completely clean, his blue eyes big and stupefied. "But," he said, "I've only wanted to kiss you for two."

Jack just shrugged.

Holland's blonde brows furrowed, crinkling his forehead up with worry lines, studying Jack's face. "Then why didn't you kiss me last night?" he finally asked. "I mean—you did, but, why did you change your mind, then?"

"You were drunk." Jack rubbed a hand over his wrist, looking away. He had a sort of idea about his own emotions, that if he approached himself casually and carelessly, other people would, too. So he said, nonchalant, "I want more from you than sex. I don't know what you want from me, but I'm not really in the position to get my heart broken again, March. I'm almost fifty, for God's sake. For me, it's either settle down or be a bachelor 'till I die, I guess."

"Holland," said Holland blankly. "You can call me Holland."

"Right." Jack screwed up his mouth, daring to look back. Holland looked like he'd been hit by a car, or just fallen through a window. "So, that's that."

"I want," said Holland, "a lot. From you. To be clear. It's not just—I only did anything last night because I wasn't thinking clearly. It's not just sex," Jack didn't miss how he stumbled over the word, almost stuttering, "for me, either."

Relief washed through Jack. He wanted to crash forward and kiss Holland, immediately, right out here in the L.A. autumn sunshine, but he held himself back, conscious of Holly just beyond the glass door, of any neighbors that could catch a glimpse of them, of the wonder and barely concealed apprehension on Holland's face. "Why did you wait so long?" asked Jack. "I've been waiting on you to make a move for at least a month."

"How do you—? Never mind, I don't want to know." Holland's face was burning bright red again. "Don't tell me. I thought I was hiding it well."

"You weren't," Jack told him.

"Don't tell me!" Holland covered his face with a hand, leaning back against one of the stone columns of the porch, tipping his head back. He was so blonde in the direct sunlight, and the line of his throat was bobbing and bite-able. Jack followed him, just a few steps, his whole body screaming with the need to be closer. "I was scared, man. You don't exactly scream the tolerant left."

Jack looked down at himself. When he looked back up, Holland was watching him, too. "Well, shows how much you know," Jack said.

Holland's tongue darted out to wet his bottom lip, a flash of pink in his red face. "Yeah," he said. "I, I really wouldn't know jack shit. I've never—,"

"You a virgin, March?" He corrected himself before Holland could correct him. "You a virgin, Holland?"

"I have a child," Holland said, blushing, full of bluster, which wasn't a no.

"You've never been with a man before, is that it?" Jack said. He edged a little bit closer. Just two more steps, and their shoes would be touching. Jack could almost imagine he already felt Holland's body heat radiating off of him, drawing Jack in.

He really had never seen Holland so flustered before. Holland's eyes darted away and back again, bright and blue. "Have you?" he countered.

"Of course," Jack said easily.

Holland opened his mouth, closed it. Gaped some more. "Jesus," he finally managed to say.

"Does that bother you?" Jack asked him calmly, more curious than wary of his response.

Holland's Adam's apple gave another little jerk. "No," he said, quietly. "Is it," he said, his ears glowing, "good?"

"Holland," Jack murmured. Their shoes were touching, now. "I can show you how good it is, if you want me to."

The other man licked his lips. He had been avoiding eye contact all day, but now it seemed as if he couldn't look away. "God," he said, "you drive me insane."

Jack couldn't help but smile, slow and pleased. "Welcome to the party," he said, dry. Holland let out a strangled little laugh, high-pitched and nervous, and put his fist in his mouth. "Holland, tell me you're not fucking me around about this. I don't just want to fuck you. I want to hold your hand and sleep in your bed and buy your daughter cheeseburgers."

"Jesus, why is that the hottest thing anyone's ever said to me," Holland gasped. His hands shot out, fisting in Jack's jacket, jerking him forward and then pushing him back, and then reeling him in a little more. "I want that," he said. "I want you to want that. Please, please want that."

"You don't need to beg yet, sweetheart." Jack pushed forward, caging Holland in against the stone, sliding a knee between Holland's legs. "I already do."

Holland whimpered, letting his head drop against Jack's shoulder. "Okay," he breathed. "I'm in if you are."

Jack peeked over his shoulder. Holly wasn't watching them. She had polished off her food and was eating Jack's untouched fries.

Taking a risk, Jack pulled Holland back by his hair and kissed him, warm and sweet, flashing his tongue against Holland's bottom lip just to hear him whine.

It was excruciating to let go, but Jack managed. He held Holland back with a hand in his hair when Holland tried to chase him, inadvertently baring Holland's throat. His lips were red and wet. He was breathing heavily. He was a fucking vision.

"I'm in," Jack told him. "I'm all in."