Chapter Text
trevor could give lectures, play-by-play commentary, and full on lessons about how easy it was to start liking jamie. not that he like-likes him, because he doesn’t. they’re good friends. nothing more, nothing less.
it’s easy to like jamie when he’s curled up under layers and layers of quilts on the couch, dozing off five minutes into a movie, legs tossed over trevor’s; when he gives trevor a guilty, red-stained smile when he gets caught eating jam straight from the jar at three a.m.; when he pops into trevor’s doorway, still asking permission to come in even if trevor left his door open just for him and there’s a perfectly jamie-sized spot on the bed: his inevitable presence already accounted for and curled around.
sometimes his heart, the traitor, does a little thing when jamie texts him (i.e. ‘sleep well,’ ‘can we pls watch a movie later, u can choose,’ ‘i saw this dog earlier & it reminded me of you,’ things that make trevor almost cringe because he knows it wouldn’t sound genuine from anyone else, but this is jamie and he’s just so earnest, even when it comes to the smallest things). trevor grins just as toothily whether jamie sends them from another state, or down a hallway, or even if they’re together, like he can’t bear to say these little things out loud.
his heart does the same little thing when jamie wears his clothes, like it’s perfectly simple, and when trevor asks about it (in a light, easy way, not in a proprietary, ‘i-really-like-watching-you-rolling-up-the-pant-legs-of-my-sweats’ way, like his hindbrain is screaming at him to) jamie’ll shrug and say that it must be a mistake, their laundry must’ve gotten mixed up (as if he isn’t the only one who does it). one time, nearly lost in the jamie-related tangles of trevor’s brain, he said ‘because i wanted to,’ as if it was obvious, as if it was just a Thing That He Did Now. it made trevor feel a little dizzy, like he did when he stood up too fast (LIKE A CRUSH, his brain screamed at him, but he tamped it down).
another thing that makes it impossible to deal with him: every time trevor needs help or comfort or whatever, at any time, jamie is suddenly there.
trevor could be having a bad night a few states away, and within half an hour of his bad mood turning into full-on irritability, his phone’ll buzz. it’ll inevitably be something from jamie. it could be funny, it could just be a question about the game plans or the schedule or even which section of the washer to put the fabric softener in (trevor: it’s labelled jameson which one do you think it goes in jamie: i just wanted to make sure tyty, and then a tiny part of trevor will think that maybe jamie knew all along, because he might be a little dumb (endearingly so), but he’s not that dumb, and maybe jamie just wanted an excuse to text him.)
and then he’ll fall asleep a little bit giddy and definitely homesick (but it isn’t a crush).
/
he comes home from las vegas and something has shifted between them, like two cards that had been holding each other up have slipped.
jamie doesn’t give him a bear hug when he comes home from the airport, just a jarringly formal handshake. he looks scared; face drawn and a new bruise on his shoulder painting it an irritatingly pretty shade of purple. when trevor asks how he got it, later, jamie shrugs and disappears into his room.
he started to wonder if he did something after a few days of radio silence, because he was always one step behind when it came to jamie.
he’d been spending lots of time on the living room floor as of late, curled up under layers and layers of quilts and making The Face: eyebrows scrunched up, lips pressed together into a tiny line. trevor’s only had the displeasure of seeing The Face a few times; after a frustrating game, phone calls with his parents, or when he was on concussion protocol and couldn’t watch shitty action movies with trevor and hampus. he dimly wondered what happened to prompt this episode, then realized it didn’t matter, he just wanted jamie to quit being so sad all the time. it started to physically pain trevor to look at him.
so he does-- well, pretty much nothing at all. he sat on the couch behind jamie and stared at the back of his head, like he could will the bad thoughts away. he didn’t say a fucking word, because the only ways he’d ever learned to provide comfort were for category 2 disasters: a failed confession, a bad grade on a quiz.
a clinical hug-and-pat-on-the-back was the only cure he ever learned and the only option ever presented. he felt woefully out-of-depth. he wanted to do more, to be a shoulder to cry on, someone with a comforting aura, like adam, or kevin, or, fuck, even max, even if he had the emotional intelligence of a rock.
he’d already committed to this weird semblance of comfort, though, and it felt like it was too late to back out. he’d sit there, cross-legged on the couch, bored out of his mind. he’d stay for hours, sometimes, which was a feat because he managed to keep his fidgeting to an impressive minimum. he’d stay until jamie fell asleep and sometimes longer, partly because he wanted jamie to know he was still there for him, but mostly because it would be unbearably awkward and a little bit mean to just get up and walk away.
he tried to google it, but didn’t really know how to describe it in the blinking search bar. depression didn’t seem like quite the right word. it was like… fatigue. jamie seemed tired.
he ordered a bulk package of lavender tea and left it at jamie’s spot at the table, waiting in the living room for his footsteps down the stairs. maybe tonight they could have the intervention trevor had been dreading. he got up a few minutes later and the box was gone.
he went to sleep feeling stung.
/
jamie started disappearing into other rooms to have his little breakdowns after that, which equally concerned and relieved trevor. it went on in poorly concealed secrecy for weeks.
until he showed up in trevor’s doorway, wrapped in his quilts from home. it was 1:45, well past his self-regulated bedtime. trevor instinctually shifted to the left side of the bed to make room, not looking away from his laptop. jamie didn’t come in until trevor looked up at him somewhat expectantly.
“what’s up?” he asked, when jamie finally laid down, wriggling a few times. it was customary, like a dog turning three times before laying down,and regrettably just as cute.
“nothin’,” jamie mumbled, burying his face in trevor’s pillow and taking a few deep breaths. he melted into the mattress and craned his neck to rest it on trevor’s elbow, seriously impeding his ability to type. trevor just x’d out of the excel documents he’d been working on and pulled up the news. he idly scrolled through articles about climate change and doomed international relations, feeling academic. jamie rolled off of his arm after a few minutes and settled down with his head leaning on trevor’s hip, damp hair soaking through his pants. trevor risked a glance down at him.
he looked exhausted, eyes glazed and looking right back up at him, bright blue dulled to gray in the light from trevor’s laptop. his breath was tickling the bare skin above trevor’s hip. jamie shut his eyes, and trevor stared at the screen until he felt the breath on his side steady and jamie started to make his little snuffling sounds; almost-snores.
then he sat there in his lonely, little room and allowed himself to stare down at jamie, satisfying a tiny, embarrassing urge sitting deep in his chest.
jamie’s busted lip was almost healed. it felt mean to think that he missed it, the thin line of bright red that he knew stung, that jamie couldn’t stop biting and sucking at. the urge to press the pad of his finger into the faint purple mark, gnawed at him. he did, lightly enough that jamie hardly twitched. he wondered, dimly, if it still hurt. if jamie’s teeth, glinting in between his lips, still worried at it sometimes, if they ever even stopped.
trevor pulled his hand away like he’d been burned and stared at an article about how the world was going to melt in the next thirty years. it didn’t really matter right now. it could matter in thirty years, though, when he wasn’t so preoccupied. it could wait.
jamie twitched in his sleep, making The Face again. trevor wondered, in the part of his mind that wasn’t infected with the Not-Crush, what he was dreaming about. if trevor was in it, in some capacity.
he shut his laptop and fell asleep sitting up.
/
he finally accepted it, a few days after that. he’d been watching jamie sleep again, which was pretty hard to defend, even to himself. dudes don’t usually watch their friends sleep.
(jamie tiptoed into trevor’s room at half-past two and snuck under the covers. trevor humored him and pretended to be asleep, even when one freezing foot brushed the thin skin on the back of his knee and he nearly screamed. he rolled over after waiting, patient only in the dark, for jamie’s breaths to slow.
he looked softer when he was asleep, finally at ease. trevor wanted to reach out and poke the freckle on the bridge of his nose, so he did. jamie twitched a little and squinted at him, making a noise that sounded a lot like ‘hrrmf?’
“go back to sleep.”
“no,” jamie slurred, already closing his eyes again. trevor huffed at him and promptly went back to staring.
he tried to picture this with any of his other friends. like, if josh was in bed with trevor right now, would he also have the inexplicable urge to bite his ear? or his neck, or his cheek? he started to suspect two things: that by watching the stupid brendan lemieux video, he’d contracted his weird biting habits, and that he might, maybe, have the tiniest crush on jamie. well. that was something.)
trevor’s got it under control, though. the wavering ache in his chest whenever he looks at jamie, he means. it’s fine. totally cool.
crushes on teammates aren’t entirely uncommon, after all. it’s the duration that’s fucking with his head (and heart): the sports psychologist said that it’s just infatuation, idolization, or whatever. something that’s not that deep. long story short, trevor shouldn’t worry about it.
except he can’t just quit, he’s never known when or how to, and worrying about it creates an endless cycle that goes a lot like jamie, jamie, jamie. i wonder what he’s doing right now, what’s going on in his head… are there thoughts behind those big blue eyes? even if there weren’t, he’d still be cute which is, predictably, unproductive.
so he’s come to accept it as a fact that he a) has a lingering not-crush on his teammate and tentative best friend, b) needs to come to terms with his feelings, and c) is completely fucked, in the short and long term, because of all of the people in the world, it had to be jamie.
jamie, who couldn’t take a hint if it was screamed at him through a megaphone. jamie, with winsome, big blue eyes. jamie, with the room a hallway down from trevor’s.
trevor doesn’t even know if he wants to get rid of it anymore. when it first sprung up he tried playing a game of emotional whack-a-mole, shoving every single soft feeling he had towards the other boy down as soon as it was acknowledged. now he just moves on from them and reminds himself on a daily basis that leaving a trail of bite marks on his best friend's neck, no matter how much he might want to, is socially unacceptable.
he’s carefully constructed a pro’s and con’s list in his notes app, like any sane person would, depicting the benefits and drawbacks of allowing himself to like jamie. it goes like this:
PROS:
he is, realistically and objectively, very cute
nice to me
convenient (?)
CONS:
financially draining
fucking up my entire life
do i even like guys????
(although it was a little late to be having this type of revelation, he stopped and took a very reflective breather after filling in that last con. immediately after that, he headed off to practice, where he stared at the pale expanse of jamie’s back, splotchy with fading bruises and freckles, in the locker rooms. the answer, it turned out, was a resounding yes.
at least he could add ‘enlightening’ to the list of pro’s.)
the list didn’t really help. he’d been flirting with jamie almost nonstop since they’d met, when he wasn’t so inhibited and didn’t yet value his dignity, and he assumed it was enough to let jamie know. it wasn’t. so it became their thing: trevor using his best (and worst) pick up lines, pet names, and straight up physical affection to try to get his message across.
none of it worked. jamie was keeping him infuriatingly on edge with the tension: every now and then he would dignify trevor’s flirting with a blush or a tiny, secret laugh, and trevor would make a mental note about what he liked and didn’t like, and saved it for later. most of the time, jamie would respond with a close-lipped customer service smile and tell him to stay focused, and trevor would do his best to listen. he wasn’t getting anywhere. he needed to change his tactics, but he wasn’t quite sure how. he’d never been this unsuccessful with flirting before.
what complicated things further was the fact that jamie wasn’t a normal crush. he’d had plenty of forbidden crushes before, and simply erased them through sheer will.
where the adoration had died out with the others, though, it just festered with jamie, making him feel almost sick with the rushes of butterflies.
and the butterflies were incessant. every time jamie gave him that painfully endearing, close-lipped smile, like he’d been keeping a secret. every time he scootched infinitesimally closer on the couch to rest his head on trevor’s shoulder, like it was reserved just for him. every time he tapped their helmets together, got caught at 3 a.m. sneaking strawberry jam that has too much sugar to fit their nutrition plans, or even just stopped by to sort trevor’s laundry before heading to the laundromat since the washer broke (trevor broke it, but it doesn’t matter), trevor’s stupid, little, traitorous heart sings, and he hates it.
he wanted to confess, but he’d already used all of his best lines the other hundred times he’d confessed. he considered just sitting them down at the kitchen table and staging an intervention, more for himself than jamie. that would probably just scare him, though.
trevor started to wonder if jamie just didn’t understand what a crush was. that seemed to track: jamie’d never mentioned a girl (or a guy, of course) from high school, and always seemed shy when the guys would talk about anything in the locker room. trevor had tried talking about girls with him one time and received a blank stare for his efforts.
he tried to tone it down a little after that, paranoid that jamie would somehow finally figure out what a crush was and how blindingly obvious it was that trevor had one on him, so he went back to doing strictly friend activities.
jamie was on the couch, two hours into a youtube documentary binge, when trevor launched himself over the back of the couch and flopped directly onto him. he craned his neck to see what jamie was watching-- something about the migration of monarch butterflies-- and wriggled around a bit, trying to turn jamie into his personal cushion.
“that hurts, y’know,” jamie said, belatedly, but he still let trevor move him around until he was comfy. win.
“you’re so…” trevor trailed off, legitimately unsure of what to say.
“if you tell me i’m soft, i’ll kill you,” jamie said, glaring up at him, “i’m not. i worked out, like, a trillion hours this week. it’s not even funny.”
“sure. you’re just… cushioned,” jamie kicked him, which trevor supposed he deserved. “and comfy. top tier personal pillow.”
“shut up. i’m trying to watch the butterflies.”
“and you say you’re not soft,” trevor elbowed him, but settled down anyway. jamie shut his eyes a few minutes later, since apparently trevor’s full body weight directly on top of him was the perfect condition to fall asleep. he was still holding the phone up, so trevor just kept on watching until he woke up with a start.
“did i fall asleep?” he asked, rather unintelligently.
“yeah. you didn’t miss a lot, though.”
“m’kay.” jamie stretched, rolling his neck, and trevor had to physically hold himself back from pressing a little kiss to it. “am i still comfortable?” jamie asked, stupidly pretty face a centimeter away, and trevor’s grip on reality was quickly fading. he needed an out.
“no,” he lied, getting up clumsily and elbowing jamie in the throat in the process. “that’s my bad,” he said, stumbling into the kitchen and out of view so that he could break down. just friends. just two dudes being friendly, he screamed at himself.
“z?” jamie asked, poking his head up to peer over the couch, “can you please come back and do that again?”
“do what again?” trevor knew, but he liked watching jamie squirm. what could he say?
“uh. lay on me. please,” trevor raised an eyebrow. “it was comfy.”
“you want me to spoon you.” jamie narrowed his eyes.
“i didn’t say that.”
“you kind of did.”
“did not. nevermind. forget i asked.” jamie disappeared back onto the couch, and trevor fell onto him again. “moment’s gone,” jamie complained, trying to shove him off. trevor, sufficiently heartbroken and already kind of missing having his face shoved into jamie’s neck, rolled off and headed upstairs.
jamie purchased a 20-pound weighted blanket a few days later, and trevor felt replaced. he made this known as soon as jamie started walking around with it around his shoulders.
“you’re hurt that i bought a blanket.”
“very much so,” trevor said, wounded. jamie had nearly constant access to trevor, and vice versa, and trevor would be more than happy to be jamie’s weighted blanket. it was an overall good arrangement. jamie heaved a sigh that was definitely fake and laid down on the shag rug in the living room, wrapped up under the blanket.
“c’mere.” trevor grinned, then hid it, then grinned again, because what the fuck. he happily let himself fall onto jamie and manipulate him to his liking.
“you’re a good pillow.”
“if you say that one more time,” jamie hissed, “i’ll ask hamp.”
“hampus would crush you like a bug, you wouldn’t be able to move.”
“‘s’like… the point.” trevor tried to figure out whatever the fuck that meant while jamie wriggled, even under trevor’s full weight, to get ready to fall asleep. “g’night,” he muttered, hot breath against the thin skin of trevor’s neck, under his chin. his eyelashes tickled his jawbone.
“remember that this is a privilege,” jamie mumbled, sleepily enough that it didn’t hold any weight. trevor nodded once, jerkily.
he could feel it when jamie fell asleep, and spent the entirety of the time he was meant to be napping, thinking, trying to connect dots.
/
he showed up in jamie’s room the next day, with practically no plan but all the confidence in the world. jamie, as predicted, was belly-up on his floor.
“blanket?” trevor offered, and jamie just flopped his arms a little, which was interpreted as permission. they got into their usual position, trevor on top, putting all of his weight onto jamie’s ribcage, but he stopped when he felt the bones honest-to-god creak under him. “what if you die?”
“m’not gonna die,” jamie breathed. “quit moving. i’m comfy.” trevor, for once in his life, stopped moving. he actually stopped thinking altogether, maybe, and entered a weird little zen mode he’d never encountered before.
they needed to do this more often.