Together Let's...

Three days passed by without Jack hearing a single word about ‘we need to do this!’ or ‘but, Jack, it’ll only take a few minutes!’ It was nice, but he knew. He knew that it wouldn’t last long, that it was only a matter of time.

He was proven right, of course, when the very next Saturday came around. He’d been planning on sleeping in and then getting up at around noon to go out for fast food, only to have those plans disrupted when Alex dragged him out of bed at seven in the morning. The sun was barely peeking over the horizon—in other words, it was too fucking early.

Nevertheless, Jack followed in his tired haze, not caring where his boyfriend was bringing him or why it couldn’t possibly wait another, like, six hours.

Alex volunteered to drive, which was met with a grumbled, “Damn right, you are,” and Jack was even able to catch another half hour of sleep with his face pressed against the cool glass of the window.

“Jay? Jay, we’re here,” came Alex’s voice after what felt like mere moments, and Jack pushed back at the hand that tapped gently at his shoulder. “Come on, I know that you’re gonna like this.”

A grumbled sigh and the older man was peeling his tired eyes open, letting them adjust to the rising sunlight before turning his attention to a sign on his right.

The Zoo of Baltimore.

The zoo. Alex had brought him to the zoo. That was probably more childish than building a fort had been… and it made him even more excited than any of the other things on the list had.

“So I was thinking,” the slighter man said as they climbed from the car, hands linking together between them before swinging back and forth, “that we can start on one half, work our way around, stop for lunch, and then finish off at the beginning?”

Jack wasn’t even listening, brown eyes wide with wonder and excitement and fuck he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been to the zoo.

Alex made sure to pay for their entry, and they were off, turning towards their left once inside and heading into the Africa section of the park.

Of course, they had to stop so that Jack could feed the giraffes, and then they were moving again, stopping at Asia, the everglades, and ending up at the rain forest.

“Look at all the birds!” the older male gasped, jaw dropping in pure awe at all of the colors and shapes and sizes. Sometimes he forgot how amazing nature could truly be.

“Yeah, they’re pretty,” Alex agreed, eyes roaming over the different creatures before landing on a toucan. A smirk spread across his lips as he elbowed Jack in the side to get his attention and then pointed towards the colorful bird. “I didn’t know you had another brother!” he joked, and his partner could only roll his eyes.

“You’re just jealous that us Barakat’s are more beautiful than you Gaskarth’s,” he retorted, squeezing Alex’s hand gently in his own.

Alex gave a faux sigh, looking towards the ground in disappointment. “Oh, how I wish I could be a Barakat,” he muttered sadly, glancing up towards the taller man from the corner of his eye. He was joking, not really expecting anything other than a scoff in response.

Jack wasn’t paying much attention to his boyfriend, still too consumed in the bright colors of the bird’s beak, and replied, “That’s okay; we can just share my last name.”

Alex didn’t put too much thought into it, not when he knew that Jack wasn’t listening to himself half as much as he should’ve been, and he was all too glad to follow along as the elder began to drag him off again.

“Come on,” he said, turning to throw a grin back at the younger. “I wanna watch them feed the dingoes.”