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Of course Jake ends up catching a cold. He knows its just a common myth that standing in the rain makes you more prone to falling sick, but as he lays in fetal position on the couch, rapidly depleting the tissue box next to him, he thinks that there must be some truth to it. Or maybe he’s just shit down on his luck.
As Jake reaches for another tissue to blow his nose, he hears Steven snapping at him, “Oi, stop blowing your nose so hard.”
“That’s just the comforting tone I need right now. Thanks, Stevie,” Jake grumbles, his voice hoarse and nasally. “What did I do to piss off Your Majesty the Queen?”
“Yeah? How about this — I just got an email from Donna sending her condolences for my nana, who apparently died yesterday. And then she said that even though it was a family emergency, she’s still gonna have to deduct the missing hours from my salary. Oh, and how about the fact that you blacked me out again and made me late to my date with Layla.”
“Rest in power, tita,” Jake mumbles, rolling his eyes and flipping over to face the couch, as if that will block out Steven’s voice.
“Jake, you promised us. We’ll let you keep doing your Moon Knighting as long as you don’t let it interfere with work. And our daily lives.”
“Yeah, well, shit happens. Won’t happen again, Winnie the Pooh.”
“Winnie the— oh, go screw yourself, Lockley.”
With a huff, Steven storms off, leaving Jake to sulk in the heavy silence of the apartment.
***
“Heard you and Steven had a bit of a row,” Layla probes tentatively, eyeing Jake over the rim of her hardcover.
“I’d barely call it that. That English twat threw a hissy fit about me ruining his shirt or whatever… and getting home late,” Jake looks up at Layla, but quickly averts his gaze when he accidentally makes eye contact with her. “I mean, for what it’s worth, I am sorry about making Steven late yesterday.”
Layla shakes her head and forgives him with a smile. “Hey, it’s fine. I know you’re the one that bought the flowers — floriography is your thing, not his, isn’t it?”
Jake raises his eyebrows in surprise, then immediately regrets it when it sets off the throbbing, feverish headache that’s been nestled between his eyes the whole day. “I mean… yeah, I guess it’s fun to read about it sometimes. Damn, didn’t think you’d remember me reading about it. Color me impressed, super spy señora.”
“You don’t have to act so sassy and surprised every time someone remembers something about you, you know?” Layla says, folding down the corner of the page she’s on before setting her book down to look at him. “Some people just notice things about you because they like you.”
Jake makes a point to laugh sarcastically — only to immediately inhale a bit of phlegm and fold into a coughing fit that makes his eyes water. Layla sighs and shuffles closer to rub his back while he fights to regain his breath. “See, if you didn’t always act so suave and unapproachable, you wouldn’t have choked, literally,” she teases.
“Are you trying to therapize me?”
“A little bit. Steven vented to me earlier, right after he got Donna’s email — he never mentioned anything about a ruined shirt.”
“That goddamn snake—”
“Jake, what’s going on? I’ve never heard you pissed off at Steven like that.”
“Me, mean to Steven?” Maybe it’s the fever making him delirious, but Jake feels unusually loose-lipped. He grips the Tawaret plushie he’d been cuddling even tighter, practically digging his nails into her embroidered eyes. “No, never. How could I ever bully that sweet little face? All he wants to do is have a lovely dinner with his lovely girlfriend, and stupid Jake Lockley just had to come along and ruin it by getting his legs and ribs broken by some baddies that stupid Khonshu told him to go after.” He curls around the plushie like a bristling cat, gnashing his teeth together as he continues his tirade. “Because stupid fucking Jake couldn’t keep his promise about not messing up Steven’s job. I mean, it’s not like I was dying to fuck his work up, alright? It just happened that I caught my targets’ trail, and they were passing through London, and I was never gonna get as good of a chance again. But I guess I just can’t go one day without killing someone or fucking someone’s life, right?”
Jake doesn’t even realize his eyes have welled up until Layla pulls out a tissue and offers it to him. “Oh, Jake…” she breathes, frowning softly, placing a hand over her heart as if to feel for some palpable heartache. “Why didn’t you say anything? We would have gone straight home to get you looked after.”
“That’s why I didn’t say anything,” Jake retorts, pushing his face into the back of plushie Taweret’s head to hide his stinging eyes from Layla. “I didn’t want you canceling plans or whatever because of me. I’d caused enough trouble already.”
“Don’t be silly,” Layla says, trying to wrap her arms around Jake’s stiff shoulders.
Without removing his face from the plushie, Jake mumbles dejectedly, “You’re gonna get sick from me.”
“I’ve got a good immune system. Come on.” Layla squeezes him with her arms until he finally slackens into her embrace, still holding onto Taweret. She sighs and starts running her fingers through Jake’s hair. Unlike Marc and Steven, Jake is a lot more averse to touch — it’s taken a while for them to figure out what types of intimacy he enjoys, and what types he can’t tolerate. Jake himself doesn’t quite understand why his preferences seem to shift from one day to another. His threshold for physical touch is an exhausting puzzle to crack, so most days he’d rather leave the beast undisturbed.
Hair touching, however, is the fail-safe that Layla can always count on. So she works her nimble fingers through his hair, weaving through his curls, rubbing small circles near his temples to alleviate the tension that’s making his forehead crease up. Against himself, Jake’s eyes flutter shut and he melts a little into Layla’s hands. His grip on Taweret slackens enough for her to no longer look like the stuffing is being strangled out of her.
When Jake relaxes enough to let Layla hear a small, pleased hum, she smiles and says, “You know, you have such nice curls, but none of you ever do anything to take care of your hair. I’ve been telling Marc for years that he can’t use two-in-one shampoo if he wants healthy hair, but I don’t think he cares.”
“Marc? Obviously not. There isn’t a single bone in his body that knows what looking good means.”
Layla giggles. “It’s your body too.”
“You know what I mean,” Jake mumbles.
“Yeah, but I like teasing you,” she giggles. “So, what do you say, would you like an at-home salon pampering to unlock the full potential of your curls?”
“Uh…” Jake’s muffled voice trails off. “I mean, I was just about to fuck off. Isn’t tonight supposed to be date night with Marc?”
“Please, I’m married to him. Making it up later can’t be that hard to arrange.” Layla tries to look at his face, but the Taweret plushie proves to be an immovable obstacle. She picks another tactic — appeal to Jake’s infinite desire to feel useful. “Okay, let me rephrase: will you let me give you a hair treatment to satisfy my personal curiosity?”
One eye peeks out from behind Taweret’s head; it’s bloodshot, almost ruby-red, from how hard Jake must have been rubbing at it all day. He huffs, “Fine. But only because you want to.”
***
Jake can barely keep his eyes open as warm air rolls down the back of his neck, the hairdryer’s gentle whirring behind his ears filling his brain with fuzz. Layla waves the dryer from every angle with practiced care, pausing here, there, gently scrunching sections of hair as she holds it under the warm air of the diffuser. “You look relaxed,” Layla smiles as she steals glances at his face.
“I don’t know what you put in my hair, but this shit smells amazing,” Jake admits. “Even with my blocked nose.”
Layla snorts, amused. “For the prices I paid for my conditioner, shampoo, hair mousse and oil, they better smell amazing.” She turns the dryer off and tousles his hair here and there with expert swiftness, like a real professional hairstylist. “So? Did you like it?”
“I feel like a million bucks. Do I look good?”
“You look like ten million bucks, Prince Charming.” Layla gestures at the mirror next to the front door, and Jake tries to fight down his impressed grin when he catches his reflection. The system hasn’t had time to get a haircut in weeks, and their hair has grown out into a seemingly untamable lion mane. With the magic that Layla has worked, however, Jake has to admit that he looks… pretty damn handsome. Like some lovable professor who should exclusively wear cardigans and socks with tiny animals printed on them. He stares for a few moments until his reflection starts to shift by itself. It’s Marc, wearing his usual expression of disgruntlement with one eyebrow prominently arched up.
“You stole date night.”
“Yeah, well, I guess Layla just likes me more,” Jake shoots back smoothly. Next to him, Layla snorts and rolls her eyes, roughly figuring out what Marc is saying. “Would it help if I told you that you look like a handsome devil right now?”
“Don’t get cocky, you’re not the one that’s legally married to her.” Marc may sound annoyed, but Jake knows that this is him in a good mood; he usually doesn’t humor Jake’s disses at all. Marc pinches one of his carefully-styled locks between two fingers and examines it. “Didn’t know our hair could do this.”
“Right? I mean, you slick your hair back with nothing but spit, grease, and prayers. And Steven doesn’t even try to comb his hair. Why do you lot think I always have a hat on standby?”
“C’mon, it’s not that bad.”
“Oh yeah, it’s that bad—” an abrupt sneeze rips off the end of his sentence, and Layla and Marc mutter quiet ‘bless you’ s at the same time. Jake sniffles and groans. “Puta madre, my head is absolutely killing me.”
Layla crosses her legs on the couch and nestles a pillow between her thighs. Then she puts her hands on Jake’s shoulders and starts guiding his body back. “Come on, lie down here.”
Jake complies and leans back, trying to not to mess up the curls that Layla had spent the past half an hour painstakingly styling as he rests his head on the pillow. Even now, he’s still clutching Plush-weret. Layla presses her fingertips into his temples and he has a moment of panic as he wonders whether or not he should shut his eyes — closing his eyes in front of anyone, even Layla, goes against everything in his hyper-alert nature, but he’s not sure she’d appreciate him staring up at her like an unblinking hawk.
As she starts working circles into his scalp and gliding her thumbs up the skin between his eyebrows, however, his body starts to make the choice for him. His eyelids, laden with the urge to sleep, begin to drop; his shoulders sink down, letting go of the tension he didn’t know they’d been holding. Even his jaws, which always seem soldered into a tight-lipped grimace, start to relax.
Layla hums as she continues to massage his scalp, and Jake faintly registers the tune as an Arabic pop song from the 60s that she'd mentioned her dad liking. In the mirror, Marc closes his eyes and listens contently as well.
Outside, the rain falls gently onto the streets of London. The storm is going into its second day now, and it's only just beginning to soften. He’d spent all of yesterday cursing the weather, but now that he’s indoors, resting on Layla’s lap and swathed in his own oversized clothes, Jake doesn’t mind the rain quite so much.
He’s not sure how long he managed to fight off sleep, but eventually, he lets himself relax into the blanket of opaque darkness in his mind. Layla’s fingers seem to fade away, seem to lower him into a pool of warm swirling static. He only vaguely remembers the last half-formed thought that crosses his mind before it too fizzles out into drowsy, liquid dreams — he’ll never admit to Steven how much he actually likes this tiny, cluttered, cozy apartment.
***
He wakes up to Khonshu’s hands around his throat, to bandages draped over his face like blindfolds. Jake wakes up with a gasp and then a growl and his hands fly to his neck to tear off the invisible threads— threats— but there’s nothing to grab and his hands come away with cold sweat and he looks around the apartment to find no movement, no enemy, no Khonshu.
Jake wipes his feverish, clammy forehead with one hand and laughs hoarsely from his chest. “Get out of my head, fucker,” he grumbles, not sure if he’s addressing his complaint to Khonshu or his own subconscious mind. Since he’s started sleeping more (a luxury that had not previously been afforded to him in the last thirty years or so, as the emergency alter who only appears for flashes at a time), he’s been having the same nightmares — ensnared in Khonshu’s infinite hands like a songbird trapped in a cage, falling down an infinitely elastic void, plummeting down a bottomless sea of liquid blue sand and molten red blood, always dying to breathe, move, scream—
The faint rustling in the kitchen jolts his attention back. Must be Layla preparing dinner… if he’d known that Steven would go off sulking the whole day, Jake would have asked her to prepare some beef stew.
“C’mon, we agreed that we’d try going vegan for a month,” Marc says suddenly, reading his thoughts.
“Yeah, okay, whatever. Get off my dick.”
“Still pissed at Steven?”
Jake huffs. “I’m not pissed. Just… whatever, who gives a shit.” Jake gathers himself off the couch, rearranging and fluffing up the cushions that he’d been crushing in his sleep. “And here I was, feeling all moved and shit by his whole speech about wanting to get to know me and to thank me for all the shit I’ve done. Guess that makes me the gullible one.”
“Hey, buddy, come on. He meant it. We meant it,” Marc sighs, stepping closer to the mirror. “I feel like you’re just misunderstanding his character.”
“What do you mean?” Jake asks nonchalantly, only half paying attention to the conversation as he shuffles around the flat, tidying piles of books here and there if only for something to do with his hands.
“I mean, contrary to everything you say about him being all meek and shy, he’s quite hot-headed, isn’t he? I dunno if I ever told you this, but one of the first times I talked to him properly, he basically accused me of being a parasite and ruining everything that I touch.” Marc trails off with a frown, as if taken aback by the memory himself. “Well, he basically said that my… existing… hurts people.”
“Yeesh, that’s harsh, even for him.”
“Well, it was half-justified. I got him fired, killed his fish, and left him with a lot of blood on his hands.” Marc pauses and huffs to himself. “He also socked me right in the face after I told him that he’s an alter… which, in his defense, I didn’t put it very nicely. Anyway, my point is that he’s a bit… temperamental sometimes. But he’s also really kind, and he tries his best. Sometimes it takes a bit of give and take, and you just gotta be the bigger person.”
“All I ever do is be the bigger person,” Jake hisses, indulging in his own petulant mood since Marc seems hellbent on playing the parent. “But it’s never quite enough, is it? Stupid, misfit Jake can never win— either he pleases Khonshu and pisses off the system, or vice versa. Most of the time it’s neither, and he just has to wander the streets all bloody and mopey like some kind of loser—”
“Jake,” Steven’s voice almost makes him jump right back into the headspace.
“Yeah, Stevie, not right now. I don’t wanna hear any comments about how big of a bitch I’m being. I know.”
“No, Jake. I… I mean to say I’m sorry.”
“Christ on a stick, have you been listening all this time? And you let me embarrass myself for this long before you said anything?”
“That’s enough, mate. Don’t make me retract my apology.” Steven is standing in the same mirror as Marc, and the latter is shooting wary looks between him and Jake. Jake feels his face flushing as the thought that, damn, Steven really does look good with the curls, crosses his mind, even in the middle of an argument. Steven folds his arms and continues, “I overreacted this morning. I should have tried to be more understanding.”
Jake grumbles incoherently under his breath as he looks for more tissues to blow his nose, only to find the tissue box already empty. He shoots a sidelong look at the mirror. “Well, it’s… it's fine. Just forget about it.”
“But I also reacted badly because you were being completely blasé and didn’t want to communicate.” Steven’s features soften a bit, and as his shoulders slump down and his eyebrows turn upwards, Jake can’t help but notice how exhausted and vulnerable he looks. “I… didn’t like the blackout with no explanation. It— it reminded me too much of how my life was before… when I was always sleep deprived, and I had no one to talk to, and my life was completely out of control… I think it really triggered me.”
At the softening of his tone, Jake winces. Great, now he feels like the bad guy all over again. “Well, I mean, I— I’m sorry, okay? Opening up isn’t my forte. How is that a surprise?”
Marc shoots him a dissatisfied look. Steven looks at him like he’d stung him. Jake squirms under their gazes. “Stop that… stop looking at me.” He sucks in a breath between his teeth, tries to relax his bristling stance, and tries again with softer words. “I know, I know. Therapy and communication and honesty and all that good shit, right? I get it, and… I’m trying. Just… just be patient with me, alright? I’ve gone our whole lives not having had the chance to open up. To anyone.”
He hates the terse silence that follows as Marc and Steven exchange unreadable looks. But then he starts to feel tugging in both his arms — the left side more firm, and the right side more coaxing. He looks down to see his arms moving on their own to wrap around his torso. He looks up, trying not to betray his puzzlement. “What— what are you guys doing?”
“Giving you a hug, numpty,” Steven huffs. Marc nods vaguely at Steven, as if to say ditto.
“Dunno what that means, but I’m not a fan of that name.”
“Oh, just shut up and bring it in,” Marc mumbles, and Jake can tell he’s controlling the left arm because the grip is twice as strong on that side. (Is this how Plush-weret felt when Jake was cuddling her?)
Jake chuckles breathlessly, awkwardly standing in front of the mirror as he watches his reflection holding himself. Weirdly enough, it does feel like he’s being hugged by someone else. He wonders if it feels different for Marc and Steven as well. It fills him up with a warm fuzziness that starts in his chest and at the tip of his nose, but he’s going to blame it on the cold. Layla’s the only person that’s ever hugged him before, and all of a sudden he has to add two more people to that list.
“From now on, let’s work on being honest with each other. All three of us,” Steven says eventually, giving Jake a squeeze.
“Si, roger that.”
“Alright, yeah.”
They stay like that for a while, relishing in the silence which, for once, feels comfortable. It must be delirium from the fever, because Jake feels three unutterable words floating to the tip of his tongue. His lips part hesitantly, and he begins quietly, “Hey guys? I love y—”
“Boys, dinner’s ready!” Layla calls out from the kitchen. “Come help me with the plates!”
“Coming!” Steven responds; he instinctively fronts as he starts to sidle towards the kitchen. “What was that, Jake?”
“Nothing.”
“It almost sounded like you were trying to say ‘I love you’, dunnit?” Steven teases.
“Don’t push it, Stevie. I said it was nothing,” Jake grumbles, blushing so hard he’s even making Steven’s face heat up.
“Alright, we’ll pretend we heard nothing. Anyway, you and Layla owe me a date night,” Marc says.
Jake rolls his eyes. “Put it on the tab.”