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incognito

Chris's face went through a complex dance of emotions. He wanted Chel's birthday to be good, but he didn't want it to be good with Jack. He wasn't even sure he was mentally prepared to experience them as a thing for a whole day.

But he was a sucker and couldn't resist Abbi's pleading. "Okay, okay. What do we gotta do?"

He would have sniffed and made her promise as any petulant child would, but the beeping interrupted him. Groaning, he cringed, ducked his head between his arm and the couch, and pulled his indeed closer, unmoving even as Chel said her apology and escaped into the hallway. And it had been doing so well...

When the noise finally stopped, he exhaled and slowly uncurled, pushing the bangs from his eyes as he stretched back out. "Hey," he called, patting his chest. "Come back."

The first thing he did after Chel had taken her spot again and said her piece, and after a few beats of locking eyes, was tilt her head up by the chin and kiss her. Abrupt, short, seemingly planned from the look in his eyes they closed, lacking emotional passion and trading it for something steadier.

When he pulled away, Jack rested his head against the arm of her couch, nestling as best he could at that angle and with a supplemented arm to help, and let the other drape over Chel, the underside of spidery veins in easy reach. "You should care less about what people think of you," he said. "Every time I think you don't, you turn around and say something like that. It doesn't matter what they think at this point; there's nothing to prove to them that you haven't already, Chel."

"They'd be late to say so," Jack replied levelly, "seeing as I already said I did. But it's wrong to think I have anyone eating out of the palm of my hand, Chel." Besides you. "I'm not someone who gives the wrong idea: I am one, and people know what that means." Besides you.

He thought about blurting it out right there: about telling Chel, in the same thinly veiled way he had told her about his Sahara mission, of the day he visited Peyton while still recovering and drugged out of his mind and of their subsequent meeting when he carved his sign into her without so much as a stir of emotion inside; about telling her of the last time he visited his ex while she was out, how he had hounded her in quiet ways to get what he wanted and left with as great a satisfaction as he imagined he might have gotten if he had beaten her instead after a week of what felt like emptiness; about telling her how even now he still felt those urges, the glances she had caught on the days and nights when they were intimidate and he felt that wasn't enough, how the bet had set off a knee jerk impulse to drag her by the hair and make her regret considering coming near him with that intent to please her sick fascination (or his); about telling her all of this while he idly stroked her hair, touched her skin, looked her in the eyes, and felt zero regret. For the greater part of three seconds Jack teetered close to it.

And then instead he went with a crooked smile. "Which means I sometimes have awful ideas of my own. I have one final suggestion to round off your birthday if you feel up to it."

"A nap first." He never took those unless his sleep schedule was completely out of balance, but it felt like a good idea now that he had been lying down for a while, and while the pills were doing their job he imagined some shut eye was better. "Then, after a quick dinner if we're hungry, we hit some random bar. You find some poor, unfortunate soul who had a shitty Valentines yesterday, and we show her a good time."

He reached up and poked her nose. "That sound good to you?"

"Awww did lazer tag wear you out lil guy?" she teased, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath in against Jack's collarbone.

His offer surprised her. Not because it was anything new for her (a threesome was tame, practically), but because the offer was coming from Jack. She hadn't pegged him for anything more than basics. Then again, he was dating her and Chel was, as he put it, "a crazy b***h." He was bound to have a few kinks under all that homophobia.

"Sure man," was her kneejerk reaction. She couldn't have cared less who hopped into her bed. But then she said, "Wait, wait two things. One we'd have to skip down to the red bull or whatever that s**t excuse for a bar's called- can't go human hopping-" She waved her wrist to emphasize the point. "Two, I have a condition."

"I know a chick that'll act like it never happened.," Chel said, waving a hand. "She's cool, promise. One time I- nevermind actually."

More importantly, Chel said, "You gotta let me put you in makeup for it." Shark's grin. It had to be fun.

Chel began stroking his hair to counteract the bristling. I know you so well now.

"'Cause I think you'd be hot as ********>." No joke, not because it was funny, not because being feminine was somehow hilarious- but because she genuinely thought Jack would benefit from the magic of makeup. "I know you put foundation and s**t on man. I just wanna see what you'd look like with the works."

She was trying to balance her desire with how much she could make realistically happen. "She really wouldn't care. We don't even know nothin' 'bout each other 'cept names. I don't even see her around ever. Kinda convinced she doesn't exist." She put her lips on his neck a few times in faded butterfly kisses to try and smooth over her words. "But I'll try to find a way to sneak my a** through a portal." Jack would be able to feel her fingers tighten for a moment- only a small, small moment- as she walked through what the rest of that interaction might look like. Being punished for abusing a portal without supervision (Jack was reliable, but he was intermediate, not full), Jack potentially getting in trouble for instigating it (no, no, she'll say she pulled rank- she forced him into the portal? Yeah that was good), her potentially getting blown up-

"Let's do it man."