Anyone who knew David knew he hated Jackson.

To be honest his hatred was justified. Jackson’s textbook was being praised as the bible of Electromagnetism but it hardly followed what a textbook should be. It seemed like his primary goal in writing such a book was to crush the self esteem of anyone that dared to approach it; like he couldn’t care less about your understanding or how pretentious he sounded when he used words that would have you set up your dictionary next to his book all the time.

It really made him angry. How could he claim to be a pedagogue with such atrocious disregard for the student. What kind of person writes a book and only realises how hard the problems are after he’s done writing it.

He would go on and on about it, criticising everything from his philosophy to the way he paced the book; even the placement of problems.

One day, his colleagues had had enough.

“If it bothers you so, then why not write one yourself?”, they’d said.

And that’s where it all began.

David set out to write an undergraduate textbook that encompasses as many of the topics Jackson introduced in his work as he could at that level in as simple a way as possible, with a wealth of problems, aptly placed so as to guide the reader’s brain to a deeper understanding.

To do that, Griffiths had to do the one thing that made his blood boil: study from Jackson’s abomination of a textbook.

It goes slow at first, and he has to take frequent breaks so as to reign in his temper and stop himself from trashing his office in a fit of frustration. Bit by bit, his temper cools down, until he no longer pulled at his hair with anger as he read yet another oddly long awkward sentence. So densensitised to Jackson’s bullshit, it took him a while to realise that he was starting to appreciate some of the uncommon word choices in the book. How it felt like he’d contemplated an entire eon before even writing in a single letter.

He doesn’t admit it. He dare not do so, not even to himself.

So he lets those moments pass.

Sometime halfway through his manuscript, Griffiths gets a chance to meet Jackson. Griffiths was at Berkeley on an exchange. When he was offered the position, he accepted, knowing that he would have to meet the target of his resentment, and refusing to back down from the challenge.

He couldn’t sleep a wink on his way there.

Jackson was every single bit of the man David imagined him to be. Broad shouldered, a bit on the tall side and a cold impassive face, as if the book itself had manifested into a man, brooding and unreadable.

His introduction was polite, but left much to be desired. He sounded so disinterested it made David’s blood rage in his ears. So he brings up the book, challenge burning in his eyes as he comments about how he thinks the book could do with a quite a bit of revision.

The next thing he knew, he was having coffee with Jackson “call me John” himself, and grilling him about his textbook’s introduction.

Those sessions became the bread and butter of their relationship; Griffiths would criticise the book and John (no, Jackson) would ask how he would have done it. Then he’d go into a long spiel about philosophy, pedagogy, and “you have to take into account the student’s morale and feelings John, you can’t do nothing but beat them to a pulp and expect them to just keep going”

It wasn’t long before Jackson grew fond of the mass of snark, sarcasm and energy that he now chose to call a friend. Not much longer, he realised that fond was the wrong word to use here. Then again, he was used to deliberating over his words by now.

One evening, over their usual order of two sensible black coffees, as David was off on another rant about how using that one word in that one sentence in his book was the biggest mistake he’s ever done, sloshing his coffee in his mug as he gestured wildly here and there, that John figured out the word he’d been looking for. Love.

It was simple, clear and expressive (just the way Griffiths would bug him to write, just the way David would say it because it didn’t need further clarification)

But time flies, and Griffiths finds himself at the end of his stay no closer to knocking Jackson off the pedestal he built for him. So he suggests they turn their sessions into correspondence, and hopes that by the time his manuscript is ready, he’d have achieved his goal.

Writing friendly scathing letters to someone you miss too dearly shouldn’t be as hard as it is. And yet, Griffiths finds himself once again staring down a blank piece of paper as if it had personally offended him. This was his fourth attempt at responding to the letter John sent earlier this week. Everything he wrote sounded either cruel or so detached that he couldn’t bear to read them again.

He shouldn’t be agonising over how to address him or how much he missed him or how sweet John sounded in his letters. He shouldn’t sighing like a lovesick girl who’s lover had gone to war. And so, he stops. Stops caring how his letters read or how short they are or how the more words he bites back the longer John’s responses become, filling in the gaps of silence with worrying and talk about how he’s been doing or where he’s been or what the weather was like, he talks about research and asks for input here and there, but the replies get more and more clipped that David himself started to wonder when he became such a silent being.

Guilt and loneliness are eating away at him, yet he can’t bring himself to examine their cause.

Worry and hurt eat at John.

At first, he chalked Griffith’s impersonal responses to the transition in the means of communication. It certainly took a lot of effort for him to find enough things to write about in his first letter for it to even be worth sending. He would’ve left it at that if his letters weren’t getting shorter and shorter. He thought it was because he hadn’t left much room fir discussion in his letter. (“Leave room for input but make sure to clarify that input is needed” he’d say)

So he starts prompting him, leaving him questions here and there, putting into words unfinished ideas that he had dared not say.

And yet, the answers that come back are dry, empty, hardly beyond civil. (“Oh, yes I did finish my manuscript. It is in the editing phase right now”)

So it made perfect sense that when a colleague mentioned that he’d be visiting Reed, he asked if he could come with.

Standing outside the door, John felt like a timid undergrad again. His hands were sweaty and he could hear his heart pounding ridiculously in his chest. He raised a shaky fist and knocked at the door. What would David’s reaction be? Would he be happy to see him? Would he be grossed out? Shocked? Upset? Indifferent? His mind was running a mile a second until a feeble “come in” disrupted it. He wasted no time to follow the command.

The sight that met him had him dead in his tracks. There was Griffiths, looking like he hadn’t slept a wink since they last met, his clothes in disarray, and pouring over what looked like six books at the same time. The seconds it took for him to look up felt like eons as John watched his face, now lined with exhaustion, boredom and something else.

He watched as his eyes flared with recognition when he saw him, and how his face twisted into pain then into something closed off and incomprehensible. He watched and felt his heart shatter as the words “oh, it’s you” fell flatly off of his lips. He watched until his heart couldn’t take it anymore.

If you were to ask him afterwards how he had made it to him, he wouldn’t know. All he knew is that the next moment, he had Griffiths by the collar, his lips against his, praying to something, anything that he’d never have to hear those words ever again.

He cannot help his faith wavering. Not when David is standing right there, still as a doll and barely breathing. But as soon as he broke the kiss, he somehow broke something in David because now he fell sobbing unto his chest.

And then, as if his heart was revolting against the cruelty he’d put it through, all the words he’d bit down came bubbling up, spilling out onto John’s chest as his tears soaked into his sweater.

He talked about how he’d missed him.

How he’d hated him.

How he’d tried to keep hating him.

How he couldn’t seem to breathe without thinking of him.

How he couldn’t seem to function.

How he’d never been so lonely in his life.

It was between hiccups that the traitorous words slipped past his tongue and nestled themselves into John’s heart.

“I love you”

Simple, clear and expressive. Just as he’d always been.

He lets the words soak into him, lets the words settle into his very marrow before resting his lips against his temple, hoping the proximity can finally get through that thick skull of his.

And he whispers it back, brushing butterfly kisses between every other repeat. Whispers sweet nothings and soothing words and oh how he loves him.

How he loves him, all riled up and angry. How it broke him when that fire faded away through their letters. How he couldn’t stay away even when he knew that all he’d get was heartbreak.

And David stood there,

huddled into John.

And for once,

listened.

“We’re wrecks, you and I. But at least we have each other”

Epilogue

It takes a while for them to get David's life into swing.

What between reorganising and cleaning an entire office and apartment and making david have 3 meals a day (and no coffee is NOT a meal), John had his hands, and his days full. He had to take a short break from university to get things done.

It was only when he went back to work and that he realised that things had stopped being about keeping David’s place from becoming a pigsty and became “ how do to fit all my mugs into his cupboard” and “ what do I do with copies of books we share?"

(Griffiths was the kind to write on his textbooks. John would rather die than leave a single mark on them)

He tried to visit as many weekends as possible because, while he couldn’t get himself to leave his work at Berkeley, he couldn’t resign himself to letters alone. Of course staying over raised another problem.

Jackson prided himself on being an early riser.

He was trying to make sure that sharing a bed with David wouldn’t change that.

I mean, someone has to make coffee, and David had all the grace of a drenched cat and he really didn't want to lose his mugs to sleepy coffee attempts.

He loved him, he really did, but those mugs are important.

And thus the domestic struggles of DJ and JD went on.