suitably_heroic | New York City, Sunday Evening

Home had never been a place before. It had barely ever even been a person. Even at Fandom, where safety had meant the gentle pulse of Sparkle’s presence in the Force close by, home had felt like the wrong word. It was a transient place, for transient people, and Jack, or rather Atton, was transient.

On some of his darker days, back then, he would've gone as far as to say it wasn’t real.

Because he hadn’t been real. He’d just been pieces of a person, welded together in a shape that could withstand the worst pressures applied to it, but that could never bend enough to let anything else in. Never mind anyone. Not all the way.

“This city really hit me like a galactic-class freighter,” Jack said, as they walked by the Hudson. It was getting late, and while the lights of the City-that-never-fucking-Slept were already bright and humming with the excitement of the evening, the pink haze that scattered across the horizon spoke to something much more maudlin. The darker blue of night had begun to set in, chasing it away, but it wasn’t quite there yet.

It made the city seem unreal, and in doing so, made it more real. Somehow. Oh, New York had all these sharp edges you could cut yourself on, but then there was this, the haze, something Nar Shaddaa had never known. Like a holo, or something caught on flimsi. The shouting of excited children in the background, the wind ghosting around his ears. It all came together into something all its own.

“It’s funny,” he added. “People from where I’m from tend to think of this place as backward. No ships, no blasters, just one sentient species on one mudball of a planet. But it’s not… well.”

Dane had his hands stuck down his pockets, and his ponytail played along as he turned to look at Jack with something like playfulness in his eyes. “What, not backward?” he said. “Your galaxy must be doing worse than I thought.”

Jack chuckled, and threw him an amused look in return. “I don’t know, okay? Space, let a guy cook,” he said. “Maybe that’s why I keep trying to write songs about New York. I have to find the right words and they just don’t seem to want to come to me.” He shook his head. “If I was sentimental I'd say something about how I feel this way because of the people. But it’s not really the people.”

“Ouch.”

“Oh, shut up,” Jack said. “Yeah, you’re a part of it, you big Golden Retriever. Our house is home, you know that. You know. Warm. Safe.” Beat. “Defensible with just one exit–”

Dane's eyes were fake-big. “--and those tiny windows–”

Yeah, yeah, Jack knew you’d heard this one before, Dane, whatever, he wasn’t going to let that stop him.

“--and now that we’re both in the bedroom on the inside of the building, we have an extra layer of protection.”

“And no natural light.”

“Eh, who needs natural light,” Jack said.

“Says the guy who used to live on a spaceship.”

Jack shrugged, feeling his hand bump against Dane’s as they kept walking. Turning his fingers just a second, to have them land in Dane’s for a stolen moment. “You get used to it,” he said. “I started living on starships when I was sixteen, and I definitely didn’t get any of the cushy bunks near the outside. I’d fall asleep to gray metal walls and bleeping consoles and I’d wake up to them, too. The days would start to bleed into each other, and that was fine, I thought.”

Dane looked thoughtful. “Breaking you down,” he said. “They started early.”

“I guess?” Had that been part of it, too? No, it had been an unlucky accident, at most; Revan hadn’t arrived until later. “It’s strange looking back,” Jack settled on. “I can trace all the pieces of myself I lost and where and how, now. But at the time I had no idea. I didn’t have any idea for years, actually. I was just busy running forward.”

He came to a stop at the corner of the street, and turned towards the water. He leaned his arms on the fence and stared off towards the fading pink of the sky. “I think that’s something I appreciate about this town,” he said. “You can get lost in it, sure. But you can also stop and take a breather. I know that goes in against the reputation of New York, but… I don’t know. I like the quiet that sets in when you turn onto the right block. I like the look of neon signs in the night. I like that you can walk from ‘em and wind up in the park and pretend you’re somewhere else completely for a while.”

Like tapping into the Force. (While tapping into the Force.)

“I used to think the whole world was like that,” Dane said, staring off into the yonder, too. At least, Jack liked to think he was. Made him feel less crazy. “Then I moved to Chicago. For a while I thought it was the same, too, but then it just… I don’t know. Chicago can be colder. Slower. More of a sprawl.”

Chicago was also– well. Jack reached out, and put a hand on Dane’s arm. No biggie. Just, you know. There.

“I don’t know who I’d be without New York,” Dane admitted. “After I left, I got lost. When I came back, well, it took a while, but…” He gave a shrug of his own, careful not to push Jack’s hand off of him. “I feel like I’ve found myself again. I’m meant to be here, you know? Part of the scene.” He let out a soft huff. “Part of the furniture.”

“At least you’re comfortable furniture,” Jack joked, tossing him a quick smile. “New York is a place for finding yourself in, at least for me,” he said finally. “It looks like Nar Shaddaa, but it’s the opposite. Nar Shaddaa is where you lose yourself. You blend in until there’s nothing left. Here, though, we’re all just trying to be ourselves as much as possible. Loud or quiet.”

Dane, he knew, was quiet. Unassuming. The happy East Coast surfer with the California vibes and the buried New York City wit. (Buried a lot of things.)

“And you’re very loud.”

“Someone has to be around here,” Jack snorted. And then he turned, and pressed a fast kiss to Dane’s cheek, and left it there. (Shuffled, maybe a little bit, still embarrassed to open up that part of himself.)

There was a companionable quiet between them then, at least for a while.

“Would you go on a tour again?” Dane asked quietly. “You seemed pretty miserable at the end.”

“No, yeah, I would,” Jack said. “It was good. It was good to get to do all of that, feel all of that, put ourselves out there. And I think it’s good for me not to get so rusted shut here that I forget that I used to be able to move around.”

He sucked in a deep breath. “It’s just good to come home,” he said. “I’ve never done it before. Stupid me, I should’ve gotten on that.” Coming home, appreciating the world he’d made for himself. The little restaurants where the people knew him, and where he could spit out the few words of Cantonese or Mandarin he’d learned to get around, and have it be acknowledged. Community, all the little people in their tower, all that stupid stuff.

He’d always thought of home as a physical place, or something bullshit romantic about a person or something. But it was more the sensation of something fitting around you like a glove, or maybe like you fit into it. New York City hadn’t been made for him - that was a stupid thought - but it felt like it now, from the smell of piss in the subway to the 24-7 bodegas with their deadly fluorescent lighting and extremely obnoxious cats.

As he watched the last of the pink scatter to nowhere, he drew a loud breath, and let the remaining magic of it all settle into his bones. Opened himself up to the Force, and let that tangle with this host of feelings inside of him.

“Right,” he said. “Let’s go home.”

[[ mostly establishy and very self-indulgent, but can be open ]]