solid glass

boneyarts:

Gabriel is shaking, by the time Jack comes home.

He’s curled up on the couch with the cat in his lap, staring at the TV screen–it’s a mess of numbers that just can’t be right, women in tears, a litany of support for hate from the bowels of a nation that was supposed to be better.

Jack drops his bag by the door, his shoulders slumping. A quiet, sad sigh slips past his lips.

“Gabe,” he calls, voice soft; Gabriel flinches, looks over his shoulder sharply, something in his wide, wet eyes hopeless. Something scared. It breaks Jack’s heart.

“…sorry,” he says, his voice gruff before he turns back toward the TV. He clutches the cat tighter, burying his nose in the soft orange fur as his eyes roam the screen, trying to see something that isn’t there.

A chance.

It can’t be true.

Jack crosses the room to him, drops onto the couch by his side. He doesn’t bother looking to the TV, because he knows it’s the same nightmare he’s heard on the radio, the entire drive home–the country is going to be great again.

But for who?

“…it’s going to be okay,” Jack says, his voice strained; he sets his hand on Gabriel’s knee and squeezes, knows that whatever panic, pain, fear he’s feeling, Gabriel’s must be ten times worse. For Jack, it’s a blow to his American pride, a shake-up of values he thought were common–but for Gabriel, it’s numerical, solid proof that he fights for a country who won’t fight for him.

That things haven’t changed, after all.

Gabriel’s eyes haven’t left the screen. He’s searching, desperately staring at the numbers like enough conviction will make them change, and Jack doesn’t have the heart to try to get him to stop.

Instead he pulls Gabriel’s hand to his lips, kisses over his scarred knuckles–the strongest man he’s ever known, scared by the statistics that keep getting worse and worse still. Horrified, betrayed, hurt.

When Gabriel finally tears his gaze away, he doesn’t meet Jack’s eyes; instead he throws his arms around Jack’s neck, hides his face against the soft cotton of Jack’s t-shirt. Jack wraps his arms tight around him, gives him a squeeze, tries to pour all of his love, his comfort, his support into the motion.

“We’ll be okay,” he whispers, against the coarse curls of Gabriel’s hair, his lips pressed to Gabriel’s temple. “We’re going to be okay.”

Jack prays for the sun to rise, and hopes his words hold true come dawn.