Loki chewed on his lip, stiffening. “I thought I should run... but I couldn’t just leave you.” Slowly, he locked his gaze with Red Jack’s. It expressed resignation to his fate, whatever it might be. “Will you tell your friends?”
Red Jack squinted at him. “You’d be dead if I do.”
The warm fingers moved against the center of Red Jack’s palm, and Loki sniffed, his eyes glazing over. “Jack... I am already dying.”
“Huh?” He slowly ran his hand over his patched-up side but kept his eyes on Loki, who moved, letting the light from outside hit Red Jack with a brightness he needed to adjust to.
“I have cancer. In my brain.”
Red Jack was processing this all-too-slowly, and he grabbed Loki’s fingers before Loki pulled them away as well. “What? No. You’re fucked in the head, but that doesn’t mean you have cancer.”
Loki chuckled and squeezed back Red Jack’s hand. “No. I do. They can’t do anything for me. I had three months left on the day we met.”
Red Jack calculated in his fuzzy brain. That was about three weeks ago. He looked at Loki as if he saw him for the first time. Cancer? Three months left? This couldn’t be happening. How did Red Jack survive getting shot, yet Loki was to die? “How long was I out?”
“Just one night. I didn’t hit anything... important.” Loki shifted in the chair, as though it was uncomfortable.
“I hit you. You shot me.” Red Jack frowned. “Why are you still here?” he asked, even though he was happy to see Loki by his sick bed. He must have been the one to get him to the hospital in the first place. Why would he waste his life on spending time with Red Jack?
Loki was silent for several seconds before he finally opened his mouth with a wheezing intake of breath. “On the day I found out I’m through, I was all alone... and you contacted me.” He pulled the chair closer and leaned forward, resting his head on Red Jack’s palm. “That had to mean something. I was meant to be with you.”
That had to be the saddest thing Red Jack had ever heard. Was there really no one else in Loki’s life that he’d rather spend his time with? And if there wasn’t, Red Jack was beginning to understand why Loki clung to him so desperately. “I never thought you treated us so seriously. I thought you just wanted a cheap place to stay…”
Loki sniffed and kissed Red Jack’s hand. “Will you let me stay? Just for a few more weeks. I won’t be bad again,” he whimpered, and Red Jack felt an unmistakable wetness on his skin. “I’ll be gone soon, but just a little bit longer? Can you give me that time?”
Red Jack swallowed, ignoring the dull pain in his body. This had to be the strangest request he’d ever gotten. “I don’t know how to be in a... relationship. Are you sure you wouldn’t rather spend that time with someone else?”
Loki looked up at him from behind the curtain of messy hair. He smiled. “No. You’ll be my one big love.”
This all slotted Loki’s actions into the right place. His confessions of love and destiny. Loki didn’t have enough time to wait till he was in his thirties, like everyone else. Red Jack wasn’t ready to commit to someone for life, but two, three months? He could do that. It wouldn’t kill him to be fucking just Loki for that time. All the girls of the world could wait. It wasn’t them who had cancer.
“But we need to keep it behind closed doors, okay?”
Loki picked up Red Jack’s hand and cuddled his face against it, tickling it with his warm breath. “Sorry about the shot. I was upset.”
“Your brain’s messed up, that’s some kind of excuse. I guess it all makes more sense now. I didn’t cheat on you on purpose or something. I just… I didn’t assume you treated our little thing that way. We never talked about sleeping with just each other.” Loki was seriously hot, fun to be around, and provided Red Jack with possibilities he could never get again. He could give up pussy for that, it was just for a few weeks anyway.
Loki smiled. “I hid away the gun. Told the police you were attacked by people in balaclavas. All right?”
Red Jack smiled slowly at him. “Good boy. It was a stolen gun, no connection to us.”
“And I won’t tell anyone.”
Red Jack looked into Loki’s eyes, and he couldn’t help the odd warmth spreading through his chest despite the biting pain in his side. “No one ever wanted me as a boyfriend.” Fuckbuddy? Sure, quite a few people, but boyfriend? That was new. He’d never imagined anyone would actually put up with him. Red Jack reached out to Loki and ran his fingers over those pretty lips. He knew he should wish a painful death on Loki for shooting him, but the danger only turned him on. Now that he survived, he saw their fight in the light of passion.