Work Your Way Out

It was an unremarkable morning for Chase Young, pleasant only in that he had the pleasure of waking up with Jack Spicer in his bed. This didn’t happen enough for his liking, but neither did he want to keep Jack against his will, and so he only had his lover wake up in his sheets about half as often as he should like.

This morning, he had done his morning exercises, washed and dressed to find Jack already awake and in the smaller of the dining rooms, picking at fruit on the low table and draped across several of the cushions on the floor. The redhead was looking at his tablet, and Chase couldn’t help leaning over to see what he was looking at.

“Jack, why does that refer to you having a Canadian boyfriend? Should I be jealous?” He meant it to come out a bit lighthearted, but an unpleasantly real note of envy snuck in.

Jack squawked and rolled over, caught in surprise. He took a deep breath to calm himself and rolled his eyes. “No, that’s just a joke- since nobody’s ever seen me with you, some people have decided that instead of being a reclusive tech genius, I’m a delusional one. Like Elon Musk except I actually invent things.”

“Why do they care?” Chase asked. He’d seen his share of court intrigues over the years, when he bothered, but it seemed strange to him that anyone would care about Jack’s dating life when there weren’t any politics involved.

“I don’t know, because it’s a slow news day in the tech sector.”

That was glossing over it, but Chase could see Jack didn’t want to have this discussion again. They’d discussed plenty of times that the warlord didn’t care about things like ‘press releases’ and ‘good PR’ and Chase had been pleased when the young man dropped what he thought of as vanity.

"What sort of places do they expect your 'boyfriend' to go?" Chase asked, sneering the word 'boyfriend' for the relic of modern shallowness that it was.

It was clearly still bothering Jack, though, as he dropped his tablet into his bag. “I don’t know, Chase. Probably literally anywhere. It’s my own fault for mentioning you, I guess.”

“Considering the alternative was letting me murder that journalist that kept flirting with you, I’ll agree it was your own fault. Disembowelment is always the better option, Jack. Will I see you tonight?”

“I’m not sure when I can get back out here,” Jack said, kissing Chase on the cheek and then grabbing several more slices of fresh melon to shove in his mouth. “Mrsz ma mrobmem-”

Chase inclined his eyebrow a fraction and Jack sighed, stopping to chew and swallow the melon before speaking. “There’s yet another problem with the ambient charging manufacturer and Min wants me to go out to the factory myself and the expo’s on Friday, so I’m going to be fucking busy. Probably after the expo? I’ll need to hide for like an entire week at least.”

Once Jack had left the lair for what he persisted in calling “the real world” despite Chase’s arguments to the contrary, Chase opened the laptop Jack had given him and decided to dedicate his considerable attention to resolving this Canadian boyfriend issue.

Chase frowned. He'd always considered such things petty and unimportant, but, he reflected, reputations themselves were not unimportant. If his lover was going to continue living suspended between these two worlds, magical and technological, he deserved to be feared and respected in both, not mocked.

With the search skills Jack had taught him to ensure he got cat videos and not other kinds of pussy when he searched, Chase was able to track down a handful of articles about Jack’s dating situation, including the article referring to Jack’s “Canadian boyfriend.”

Chase attempted to leave commentary on the article in question, because it managed to insult both Jack’s intelligence and his taste in men, which Chase found personally offensive. However, it required a “Twitter login” and despite Jack’s encouragement, he had not previously deigned to dirty his hands with social media.

Still, if this was what was required, Chase would lower himself to it. Jack had explained Twitter to him in at least three different ways, usually when he was complaining about what other people had said there, and Chase was confident he could figure it out. He followed the instructions to register, uploaded one of the pictures on the computer when prompted, and returned to the offending article.

“@pcocincinus: This article is base slander of a brilliant young man. Also, Jack’s boyfriend is Chinese, not Canadian.”

He found this rather less satisfying than more traditional method’s of defending a lover’s honor, and followed the link from the article to the author’s own Twitter account. It was not particularly professional and it was lacking in cat pictures, which Chase felt was all he needed to know about the journalist.

The questions started off reasonable enough, with the journalist himself asking where he lived (“an off-grid location in China”), what he did all day (“I have a lot of cats”) and what kind of underwear Jack wore (“I believe he referred to them as ‘tight-whites’”).

More questions started appearing. How did they meet? (“Antique hunting.”) What did Chase think of Jack’s work? (“It is not my area of expertise but I find it impressive.”) What was Chase’s area of expertise? (“Martial arts.”)

Within a few hours Chase had given himself a headache trying to keep up. He wondered how Jack managed. He set the computer aside and forgot it existed, satisfied he had resolved Jack’s boyfriend issue, and the obnoxious noise from the twitter website had trailed off by the time he thought about it the next day.

Chase passed the time as he usually did when Jack was gone, meditating, sparring with his warriors, reading, and absolutely not being bothered by the absence of his lover.

Several days passed, and one of the cats alerted him that the computer had begun making noise in earnest again. Chase sat down to see what was going on. There were… a lot of messages. More than there had been when he left, and many were much more crude, some insulting…

Jack had warned him the internet was like this, but it still took him some time to trace it back to the source.

Chase appreciated Jack’s reply even though he didn’t quite understand it. He could tell he was being defended, and that was enough. He had started composing a response when a new box appeared in the lower right corner of the screen.

“Not willing to be seen with you!” Chase was so offended he yelled aloud at the computer. Was that really what Jack thought of him?

Chase frowned. Why would Jack think that?

Perhaps, Chase admitted, he had been a bit too dismissive of Jack’s priorities, but that didn’t mean-

He sighed. It meant he couldn’t be bothered to dress nicely and go anywhere with his boyfriend. He might tell himself that it was because he he didn’t want to be seen at all, with or without Jack, but he’d never bothered to explain that to his lover, had he?

Well, it was only fair that he fix this once and for all, especially because Jack had told him not to as if he was the one who gave orders in this relationship. He checked @evilguygenius and confirmed Jack was at his expo, the very important thing he’d been planning for. Chase hadn’t asked what it consisted of, but presumably it was very public.

First, though, he would need to prepare. He went into the room where Jack kept his things in the lair, looking through Jack’s clothes, then picking up a magazine Jack had left on the desk and flipping through it. He found a look that he thought would suit him and concentrated, bending the energy that made up his armor into a bulky, modern coat like one in the fashion magazine, and making the slightest alterations to his layers beneath in an effort to ensure they would look fashionable. He hadn’t worried about fashion since China had an emperor… actually, now that he thought about it, he didn’t think he’d worried about fashion since that time he ended up at Versailles.

He focused on sensing Jack’s location and teleported himself nearby. The noise and crowds in the space were unpleasant, but Chase forced himself to block them out.

The walk around the halls was frustrating. He kept hearing Jack's name and looking around, but it was only ever someone talking about him. Occasionally they were talking about how pathetic he was and Chase considered eating them. That wouldn't solve the problem, this time. He couldn't see his Jack.

His Jack. How dare any of these people think they were entitled to any of Jack's time? Why did they think they had the right to speculate about his personal life anyway?

Finally Chase heard Jack's voice projected through a speaker. He looked in the large room; Jack was on stage, answering questions about his "magic charger" and Chase hung back, enjoying the pleasure of seeing Jack in his element. Most of the people around him were dressed in polo shirts, khakis or denim, and vests that declared their alligences like flags on dull armor. Jack was like a bloody peacock compared to them, done up in black leather and red that made him look dramatic and almost inhuman. Jack had explained once that it was both what he liked and part of his brand, to stand out compared to all the "vest bros".

Then a man stood up and Chase could see Jack frowning from the other side of the auditorium.

"Hi, I'm-"

"Yes, Tak-Siu, I know who you are." Jack visibly rolled his eyes as members of the crowd started talking.

"What can you tell us about rumors that your boyfriend is a figment of your imagination?"

Chase was pretty sure he could hear Jack's teeth grinding.

"I'm sure they're coming from the same people who were declaring my free charge project a figment of my imagination two weeks ago."

"I believe there was a Twitter thread suggesting the whole boyfriend debacle was intended as a distraction from the issues with your chargers," Tak-Siu pressed.

You started that, Chase thought. He didn't realize he was growling until he saw the people on either side of him edging away.

"And yet I've demonstrated my tech's ability to charge a device from ambient energy just now, so clearly that must have been a vicious rumor," Jack said, and Chase could almost feel the energy shifting in the room, the way these people respected Jack.

But he was growing bored of these people demanding Jack's time and attention and, he reminded himself, he'd come here for a reason. Chase shook himself out of his thoughts and strode up the aisle.

Tak-Siu turned as Chase brushed against his shoulder, just in time for the warlord to punch him in the face, dropping him to the floor with blood pouring from his nose. There was a long moment of disbelieving silence.

"Chase!" Jack's shout echoed through the hall

That shattered the moment. Some of the people near the scene on the floor screamed, and the people in nearby rows pushed away from Chase.

Now this, Chase thought, was an appropriate response to his presence.

"Hey, everybody, I see Tak-Siu's already acquainted, but this is my boyfriend Chase. You probably don't need to panic, unless you're going to insult him. I don't really advise that."

"Are you finished?" Chase called up to the stage. He raised an eyebrow and smiled just a little at Jack, who broke into a wide grin.

"Later, losers!" Jack announced, pulling the microphone from the side of his face and jumping down from the stage. He took Chase's hand and kissed his bloody knuckles, then shoved open the nearest emergency exit and led Chase outside as alarms rang behind them.

It had turned to evening while Chase was inside, and rain was falling on them as they walked. Jack was laughing, recounting the looks on the faces of everyone nearby when Tak-Siu had fallen, but Chase was quiet.

"Jack," he said when the younger man had finally stopped talking to breathe, "do you really think I'm embarrassed to be seen with you?"

Jack paused at the question, stopping under a streetlight. Chase couldn't help notice how the orange light behind him framed his head like he was a demon, and he waited patiently for the answer.

"Maybe," Jack finally admitted. "I know you've told me it's just that it's dumb and it doesn't matter, but-"

"I was wrong," Chase cut him off. "It's important to you, and therefore it does matter."

Jack blinked at him.

"I don't plan to do so often, and you cannot expect much different than you saw today-"

"-what I saw today was so hot-"

"-but I will be happy to accompany you in the future, should you request my presence. After all, I can hardly have people doubting that you belong to me." Chase learned in to kiss him, pushing Jack's back up against the street light.

"Mmm. I love you," Jack mumbled when he came up for air. "You look amazing in those clothes, by the way."

"Why thank you."

"Why don't you take me home so I can appreciate how you look out of them?"

Hearing Jack call the lair home made Chase smile possessively, and then they were gone.