Jason and You Makes Two

A/N: Hello everybody! Holiday weekend so hope you all have a good one. Be safe! Wow! Has it been a week already? Guess so... Was gonna update AC too this weekend but just didn't work out. *sighs* Did get my garden planted though! Yay! Nice sunburn to go w/it too. Ouchy! It's all good, though. A bit late getting it done this year w/ all the rain and the bad leg but now I won't have to worry about it for a while. Yay again!! Okay, on with the story!

Hope you all enjoy the update and big thanx to Lisa, Aduial, Nekoii-Desu, Johnny101, Aliases, Nodoz, Khayman, and dextrous for reviewing. Know I haven't been doing the shout-outs lately. *hangs head in shame* My defense? I'm an overworked mother of two! Ahhhhhhhhh!! I need a nap!

Big huggins to Lisa for proofing this one.

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Chapter 8

“What the fuck is this?” Jason demanded, standing over their bed half-dressed in a pair of pajama bottoms with a slip of paper in his hand and rage boiling in his eyes.

Mark blinked several times to clear his vision. He’d somehow managed to sleep past 7 am and his brain seemed to be slow waking up. Confused, he reached toward whatever it was that Jason was holding with a muddled, “Let me see,” but Jason huffed and snatched it away.

“Why?” Jason growled, “So you can use it to find his house? Or have you already been there fucking this Simon guy behind my back?”

Hearing that name spoken out loud was more than enough to bring Mark out of his haze and, before he could stop it, a gasp of horror escaped his lips as his eyes shot up to meet Jason’s accusing glare. “No!” Mark exclaimed, holding up a hand in a placating gesture as every drop of blood in his body turned to ice water in his veins. “It’s not like that! He’s just some guy I smashed with a door and he…”

“Do I look stupid to you?” Jason demanded, somewhere between a yell and a low roar, the veins in his neck stood out with disturbing clarity. Almost immediately there was a pounding on the wall from the apartment next door and Mark felt like crawling under the bed to hide from his embarrassment. There was no telling what the neighbors were thinking.

“No, you don’t look stupid to me,” Mark hissed quietly with a meaningful look at the wall nearby, “and I’ve already told you a hundred…no, make it a THOUSAND times…that I’m not seeing anyone besides you, Jason.”

“Oh, really?” Jason said with a smirk and a disgusted snort as he eyed Mark with disdain.

“Yes, really,” Mark shot back, refusing to be cowed in the face of Jason’s tantrum. “It’s like I tried to explain earlier, I hit the guy with a door. Then a huge knot came up on his forehead, so I told him I’d pick up the medical bill. I only have that so that I can mail the money to him when I get it together.” While that wasn’t the whole truth, there was no way Mark was going to tell Jason that a hot guy had given him his address in case his boyfriend turned violent.

The fact that Jason didn’t believe a word of what Mark was saying was painfully obvious by the way his jaw clenched and his eyes narrowed with doubt. “That’s such bullshit, Mark. If that were the case, you would’ve said something about it before now instead of hiding it from me.”

“That’s just it, Jason,” Mark growled, struggling to untangle himself from the comforter of their bed so that he could get up. If he and Jason were going to have it out now, there was no way he was going to do it naked and lying in bed. With a huff of irritation, Mark finally managed to free his legs, get up from the bed, and storm over to his dresser to pull out a pair of underwear and some jeans. “I hid it from you because I knew you’d react this way,” he explained with a calm he didn’t feel as he pulled his pants over his hips and zipped them. “No matter what’s going on or who’s involved, you automatically jump to the conclusion that I’m sleeping around.”

“I do not!” Jason grumbled as Mark turned to face him with accusing eyes. “I’m just not a gullible idiot. Besides, it’s kind of hard to have blind faith in you after I caught you making out with some guy in your car outside of Wally World and…”

“I’ve told you over and over that I didn’t see that coming and it was just one kiss.” With an exasperated wave of his hands, Mark stormed over to the nightstand to snatch the used condom wrappers lying there and tossed them in the trash. He couldn’t stand the sight of them in that moment. “One minute Bobby and I are stashing groceries in the trunk and the next he’s shoving his tongue down my throat.”

“Well, as I recall, you weren’t exactly fighting the guy off,” was Jason’s predictable reply.

Mark mouthed the words along with Jason as he turned to face his angry boyfriend again, his hands firmly planted on his hips. They’d gone over this on a daily basis for almost two months after that night and Jason was never going to let him live it down. “I’ve told you and told you that I was just in shock. I mean, Bobby and I were supposed to be friends. I had no idea he felt that way about me.”

“So you say, but how do I know that’s true? HE sure seemed to think that you’d given him the green flag. Hell, when I confronted the two of you about it, he seemed surprised to find out that you even had a boyfriend.”

“Please,” Mark huffed with a roll of his eyes. “The guy was just trying to save himself by throwing you off his trail. He knew good and well that you and I were together. You were all I talked to him about, outside of our jobs. Think about it Jason. What would you have done if you were him? You’re twice his size and you were making this huge scene out in public and acting like you were half-a-second away from punching him in the mouth.”

“That’s right. It’s ALWAYS my fault in the end, isn’t it, Mark?” Jason asked, sarcasm coloring his words as he huffed in disbelief.

“No, it’s not always your fault,” Mark replied as he took a deep, calming breath. They were getting nowhere like this and rehashing the thing with Bobby had never accomplished anything. “I should have been more wary where Bobby was concerned and you should have been more understanding. Still, this thing with Simon is completely different. There’s absolutely nothing going on besides what I’ve already told you.”

“Then how do you explain this?” Jason demanded. To Mark’s dismay, Jason stuck the slip of paper with the address on it into his back pocket and produced the napkin with Simon’s phone number, waving it in front of his face like exhibit #2 in a murder trial. “If you’re so goddamn innocent, why go to the trouble of keeping this guy’s phone number hidden away in your sock drawer?”

Jason finding the address in his shirt pocket was one thing. Heck, it could’ve fallen out onto the floor in Jason’s rush to undress him the night before. Knowing that his lover had actually stooped to going through his dresser was something altogether different. It clicked something on inside of Mark, and for the first time in his life he saw red. “You know what? I’m getting tired of your stupid jealousy and your baseless suspicions!” Mark growled as he stepped forward and snatched at the napkin in Jason’s hand. Jason immediately jerked it out of Mark’s reach.

“You want this?” Jason asked with dangerous calm.

Mark let out a disgusted huff and held out his hand with a no-nonsense expression. “Yes, I do!” he yelled, beyond caring what the neighbors thought. He’d been putting up with this Jason’s bull crap for far too long and it was going to stop. Now. “I plan to pay the guy back what I owe him when I get the money, whether you like it or not. It’s the right thing to do and if you can’t handle that then you can just go…play with yourself.”

Jason let out a curse and said, “Well, good luck piecing it back together.” And just like that he shredded the napkin into a million little pieces before walking into the bathroom and flushing what he hadn’t dropped down the toilet. ”

Mark chased Jason into the bathroom in a vain attempt to stop him. Then he let out a growl of frustration as the bits of napkin swirled down the drain. As the toilet whooshed, Mark remembered the address in Jason’s back pocket and quickly reached in to snatch it before it suffered the same fate or worse. Once he had it, he crumpled it up in his hand and stormed out of the bathroom with a, “You’re acting like a complete idiot,” thrown over his shoulder as he crammed the scrap of paper into his front pocket.

Within seconds, Jason was on his heels, following Mark back into the bedroom with a stormy look on his handsome face. “I’d rather act like an idiot than a slut,” Jason shot at Mark’s back when they were halfway across the bedroom.

Mark had been planning to go to the closet to find a shirt, but the second he heard those words pass hatefully through his lover’s lips he stopped in his tracks and turned on him. “I know you didn’t just go there,” he stated flatly.

“If the shoe fits,” was Jason’s confident reply. Mark paused at that, feeling as if he’d just been slapped in the face as he studied Jason’s expression for some hint of regret. Even though Jason had said that several times before, he usually got this pained look on his face that told Mark he hadn’t really meant it and that his mouth had just gotten away from him again. That definitely wasn’t the case this time.

“If you’re going to keep accusing me of cheating on you, then I might as well go ahead and do it,” Mark hissed, completely fed up with Jason in that moment. “I mean, you obviously don’t trust me and you call me things like that whenever you fell like it. I should go out and have sex with whoever I want and earn the title. Then I’d at least get SOME enjoyment out of it before you sling insults at my head!” Jason’s mouth fell open at Mark’s outburst. Then he closed it again before narrowing his eyes in Mark’s direction. Ignoring the angry expression on Jason’s face, Mark once again turned to walk away.

This time, Jason grabbed Mark roughly by the arm and swung him back around, rage burning in his hazel eyes as he gritted his teeth. Acting reflexively, Mark reached up and backhanded Jason right across the mouth before he even realized what he was doing. Jason’s head turned to the side with the force of the blow and, once he’d realized what had happened, he drew back and gave Mark as good as he’d gotten.

Mark stumbled back a few steps with the force of it as the metallic taste of blood filled the inside of his cheek. “Don’t ever fucking hit me again, Mark!” Jason growled as he stalked forward and shoved Mark back on the bed.

“I didn’t mean to,” Mark gasped, not sure whether to freak out over the fact that he’d lost it and hit Jason or because his huge, gentle boyfriend had hit him back. Not that he blamed Jason. Mark had asked for that one.

“The hell you didn’t!” was Jason’s heated response as he climbed up onto the bed and straddled Mark’s legs.

Mark panicked at the angry look on Jason’s face, despite his regret for his earlier actions, and lashed out at his lover again by taking a swing at him. “Let me up!” he shouted, his rising fear working its way into his voice as Jason grabbed his hands and pinned them over his head to keep Mark from trying to punch him again.

“Make me,” Jason growled back, leaning down into Mark’s face to look him dead in the eyes. This whole situation was too much to believe and Simon’s words from the night before echoed through Mark’s head as Jason hovered above him, his hot breath caressing Mark’s cheek while the larger man glared down at him like he wanted nothing more than to wring Mark’s neck. All Mark knew was that he had to get out of this, and fast, before things went too far. That’s why, without hesitation, Mark leaned his head back as far as he could and swung forward, head-butting Jason right in the face.

Instantly, Jason let go of Mark’s arms as he reached up with a pained howl to put pressure on his nose. Mark ignored the throbbing pain in his own head as he took the opportunity to push his large boyfriend off. Jason reached for him again with one hand as Mark retreated, but a well-placed and very solid kick to the balls erased any thoughts Jason might have had of following him.

Jason let out a loud yelp of pain, his breath freezing in his chest as he curled up into the fetal position and clutched at his crotch. His adrenaline racing, Mark ignored the urge to go back and check on his lover as he quickly gathered up his wallet from the dresser and shoved it into the front pocket of his pants. Once he’d pulled a clean shirt over his head, Mark gathered a few changes of clothes from around the room before shoving them into a bag and taking off in search of his shoes.

It only took a couple of minutes, although it felt like a lifetime, and by the time he was finished, Jason had gotten his breath back enough to speak past the pain in his crotch. “Please don’t go, Mark!” he cried out in a strained voice. Instead of replying, Mark pushed away his guilt, ignoring his lover’s plea in favor of digging his car keys out of the basket on the kitchen table. That done, he threw the small bag of possessions he’d gathered over his shoulder and walked out the door.

This wasn’t how he’d expected things to play out and he had no idea where to go or what to do. He was broke and homeless and only had a few friends left in the city. It crossed his mind for half-a-second to call his parents. They’d promised that he could come home if he ever decided to ‘play it straight’ and stop ‘making God cry’.

Almost as soon as the idea hit him, Mark dismissed it. That wasn’t even an option. He’d been miserable all through high school while trying to date girls and fit in. Playing at being straight hadn’t worked then and it definitely wouldn’t work now. There was no way he’d marry some poor, unsuspecting woman knowing he’d never be able to satisfy her or make her happy.

Simon came to mind too. Still, the only reason he’d taken the address from Jason’s pocket was so that Jason wouldn’t have it to track the poor man down any time the urge hit. He also needed it to pay the guy the money he owed him. That didn’t mean, however, that Mark was willing to knock on a new friend’s door and ask for a place to stay, no matter how good looking and nice that new friend happened to be. Unfortunately, that only left one other option. Chandra. She’d offered to let him move in with her before, but he’d turned her down. With any luck, the offer might still be open.
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Nodoz: Yay!! *throws confetti in the air* Congrats on the b-day!