They're eating ice cream at a shop not far from school. Avery snuck Jack out; technically he had an earlier curfew. Avery is smoking, wondering how two years can make him feel this much older. Jack is obviously enjoying his ice cream, and Avery wants to laugh. There's something fascinating, though, about how the small boy licks the spoon, relishing the taste like no one's bought him ice cream before. Avery puts out the cigarette, and Jack must have seen the movement because he looks up. His mouth is full, and his eyeliner is inexpertly applied, but somehow it's endearing, just like the shy expression on his face when he stares at Avery in what he obviously imagines to be a subtle way.
Avery clears his throat. "You have such a big crush on me, don't you?"
Jack turns pink, and Avery kisses him.
#
"Averyyyyy."
"Yeah, kitty?"
A rustle of blankets, of Jack attempting to move in his stiff school trousers, and Jack kisses the bottom of Avery's chin. "Do you love me?"
Avery thought about it. Of course he loved Jack. Was he in love with him? Well...yes. Didn't it make him a pervert or something, though? Jack was only fifteen. Fifteen! Jailbait! But then, Avery had loved him before he knew that, and by then it was too late to stop loving him. Not that Avery would want to.
Part of his desperate cling, of his sort of...thing, the thing with Jack that had gone from flirting to a real need, was Frank. This time Avery was the older one, and he knew that he could be everything Frank wasn't. He could be good for Jack, could show caring instead of callousness, and oh it wasn't like Jack was an experiment or anything, no, Avery really did love him. Love.
"Yeah, Jack." Avery pulled his hand up from the small of Jack's back to his shoulder to the back of his head, and ruffled the soft black hair.
"Oh." Jack breathes it, wonderingly. He seems surprised, but then he shifts again and settles his head against Avery's chest. "I knew it."
Avery laughs at the self-assured smile, and kisses Jack's head.
#
"Hey, old man."
"Hey!" Avery turns in his chair and throws a pencil at Jack. "Go away, I'm doing my work."
Jack dodges the pencil and peeks over Avery's shoulder. "Do me instead."
Avery looks up at him and laughs, accepts the upside-down kiss, and reaches for another pencil. "How did you get in here?"
Jack shrugs. "You need to start locking the door."
"Well, lock it behind you on your way out, Jake's coming soon."
"Jake, huh?" Jack trails his hand across the top of the chair, steps to the other side. "Your study partner? Stud. Y."
"Studly, even. Now sod off, little boy." Avery turns and kisses Jack, Jack kisses Avery, and Avery drops his second pencil. Jack pins him against the table, and Avery remembers something. "Wh--what was that about doing you?"
"Changed my mind," Jack growls. "I'm going to fuck you against this table."
When Jake arrives ten minutes later, he also finds that Avery doesn't lock his door. One hour and a wank later, he gasps out his orgasm and decides that locks are bad things, anyway, and also that he needs to change his sheets.