Work Text:
"Thought I knew just what I wanted
I didn't know myself at all."
Jonas asks “Is it me?” and time seems to stand still. The sounds of the city around them dim and dissapear, Isak is frozen. When he asked, did he expect to hear a yes or a no? Jonas can’t tell.
“You?! No no no no.” Isak says, and it feels like a lie—it isn’t though, he’s over Jonas but... in another world, one where he is brave enough to do this sooner, one where he doesn’t need schemes and doesn’t pretend to be into the girls he kisses at parties, one where he trusts himself, trusts Jonas to handle it—in that world, which he can’t help but feel envious of, he says yes.
After Isak leaves, reassured nothing has changed—would ever change—between them Jonas stays. Listens to the sound of cars and the low hum of birds, the sounds of his own breathing as he tries to understand the feeling of having lost something he never even knew he wanted. He misses Eva so much.
It’s the little things that makes him notice it. The same things that had him ask the question in the first place…
They are always together.
He can feel it in his stomach, his chest, when Isak leaves to meet Even—like he did to meet Eva—the way his eyes linger as he leaves, like he too feels it. Jonas turns to Mahdi and Magnus, laughs at whatever stupidity they’re arguing about, tells himself he just misses his friend.
They are closer than the rest.
It’s almost like he’s the third person in the relationship—isn’t that how it went before?—He finds himself more and more often sitting at their side while they laugh and argue, joins in with ease. Excuses himself when they start to get handsy—tells himself it’s not resentment he feels as he leaves their apartment.
He is happy for them, but never enough.
Tries telling himself it’s loneliness and kisses random girls at random parties, gets hammered and crashes in their couch. Hides how happy he is when Isak wakes up first and makes them breakfast as they plan their day. It’s just like the old times… until Even slides into the room and kisses Isak, first on the cheek then on the lips. Jonas reminds himself he isn’t supposed to care.
Eva and him get back together.
It’s good, it’s so good and so right he almost forgets the feeling lurking at the bottom of his stomach every time Isak walks up to him, smile on his face and a hand on Jonas’ shoulder—always has a hand on him—it’s easier to ignore, when he’s with her.
He thinks he loves her. And she loves him back. Like Even and Isak love each other, it feels right. The thing is, he thinks Isak would feel just as right lying next to him, hand on his, kissing him with sweet lips; touching him with cold nimble fingers in the middle of the night like on when they had sleepovers.
It’s not that he never had Isak close, that he longs for something he knows he couldn’t have—that’s what differs him from Isak—, it’s that he’s held him before, that he’s felt how warm Isak’s body feels next to his and how he sounds when he laughs lazily in the morning, how it feels to be the center of his attention, how he looks when he’s plastered drunk and stumbling on his feet and how he sounds when his heart is broken and trusts you and you only to hold up the pieces, how, when he’s happy it’s almost like the whole world is right for a moment. It’s not that he couldn’t have had it, it’s that he knows he could’ve and now he can’t—won’t.
It’s a kind of longing he can’t explain, because he can’t understand it himself—He’s mourning for something he never had and at the same time he feels the happier he’s been ever since his relationship with Eva started crashing down.
Now the three of them are back together, and Jonas finds that it’s nothing like it used to be. Not with Even there, not with the way he fights not to hold Isak just like he holds Eva, knowing that beneath the smiles and hugs there is a feeling simmering down inside him that is quiet as he shoves it deeper and deeper but that, he knows, will come out one day and demand to be felt.
At the back of his mind, he wonders what would’ve happened if Isak had said yes that day on the bench.
He thinks he understands him a lot better now.