callmemajor | (no subject)

"We can see the moon," Lorne says, nodding. "I mean, we can't go out onto the moon, but we can fly around it.

"That's fine. I'd love to just see it." He runs his fingers down Lorne's chest.

"We'll have to put some clothes on." He slides his hand down Jack's side to his hip.

Jack heaves a put-upon sigh and reaches for his underwear and trousers.

Lorne sits up and watches him for a moment. "Naked space exploration is highly overrated," he says, reaching for his own clothes.

"I've never heard it rated at all," Jack says as he pulls on his shirt.

"Well, generally," Lorne says, pulling his pants over his hips, "naked anything is thought to be preferable to clothed anything. It's just not always true."

"Facetiously," Jack says. "Though naked dancing isn't bad."

Lorne smiles at 'facetiously'. "Oh? You've done a lot of naked dancing, have you?"

Jack blushes and bends to pull on his boots. "In Berlin, um. Record player. In my little flat."

He is very careful as he does up his boots.

Lorne grins and comes up behind him, sliding his arms around Jack's waist and kissing the back of his neck. "Oh, really?" he whispers.

Jack reaches back to touch Lorne's face. "I was so free in Berlin. Ironic, really."

Lorne turns his face to kiss Jack's hand. "It's like that again, you know. Berlin. Open and free."

He smiles and nods. "I'm glad. It was beautiful, Evan. It was so beautiful before the war."

"I wish I could have seen it," Lorne says. "It...never completely recovered."

"That's a pity," Jack says quietly. He pause a moment. "I had a little room in a boarding house on Mittelstrasse, near the university. I was supposed to be studying but most of the time I was just . . . living. For the first time."

"That's what college is for, isn't it? Getting away from home and figuring out who you are, what you want from life?"

Lorne's guessing. The Air Force Academy is not the best place for any of those things.

"Even as an underclassman I'd had to hide," Jack says softly. "I was studying for a Ph.D in Berlin. I was supposed to be there for a year and ended up staying three, until it wasn't safe for Americans anymore."

"What were you studying?" Their trip to the moon seems to have been put on hold, but Lorne's content just talking and holding Jack for now.

"European history," Jack says and sighs. "And then it seemed a bit ridiculous to study history while it was changing all around me."

"History changes all the time," Lorne whispers. "It's still changing. That's the beauty of it."

"People thought the world was going to end," Jack says softly and turns in Lorne's arms to kiss him.

Lorne kisses him slowly. "The world's always about to end. People just don't always realize it like they did then."

"Oh, don't say that," Jack says softly and leans into Lorne.

"Sorry," Lorne whispers, tightening his arms around Jack's waist. "I'm not very good at painting rosy pictures."