Work Text:
Gregory hasn’t been doing much since school let out. He’s gone to some movies, read a few books, he and Jacob have been texting, and occasionally (often), he’ll text Janine too.
Or, better, she’ll text him, reassuring proof that she’s serious about keeping up their friendship, as if that wasn’t already clear from their interactions the last few weeks of school together.
Even so, he still hasn’t gotten up the courage to ask her to hang out yet, with or without their designated emotional buffer (Jacob’s mildly hurtful phrasing) there to lighten the mood.
The idea of hanging out with the others when they’re not seeing each other at work most days makes his anxiety spike for reasons he can’t fully understand. Maybe it’s something about taking steps forward, something about change, something about how rebuilding—or building, period—is both exhausting and exhilarating.
But the reality is that now that Gregory’s burned his bridges with Maurice and, in the process, alienated most of his outside-of-work-friends, his work friends are basically just…his best friends. Maybe they already were.
Gregory still decides to let someone else make the plans, because he’s sure someone else will (and he has a pretty good idea of who that someone will be), and he’s relieved when, about a week out of school, he gets a text from Jacob that reads, Movie night tomorrow with me and Janine, 7pm, your place. Are you in?
What?
I said what I said.
Why is it at my place?
Zach has a deadline he’s super stressed about and his bad mood is PERMEATING the apartment, and Janine’s place is kind of hazardous at the moment due to construction of frankly dubious legality.
-
I’m sure she’d be willing to go there, though. Neither of us want to impose.
No, it’s fine. I prefer nights in at my apartment anyway.
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Janine’s coming?
Yes she is ;)
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OMG sorry I did NOT mean to type the winky face. I was going for a smiley face cross my heart and hope to die.
Moving on.
Yes! Anyway, I’ll be there. It’ll be totally fine and very fun because you and Janine are friends. We are all friends!!! ❣️
Moving on from that too.
Fine. 7pm tomorrow, your place?
Do you even know where I live?
Janine does! :D
How do you know that?
I made an educated guess. Science! :)))
Why does that smiley face have three mouths?
It’s mutated because it’s so happy! :))))
Haha
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Okay, I’ll see you tomorrow.
Woo! :)))))
+
Gregory doesn’t often have people over at his apartment, but he only cleans it maybe twice before Janine and Jacob arrive together and he forgets why he was nervous, or if he was nervous at all.
“You have a lovely home,” Jacob chirps as he sweeps his way inside, a completely rote statement that makes Gregory snort.
“Sure,” he says, grabbing the bottle of wine Jacob nearly drops on the floor handing to him. “I got popcorn. Unsalted. But I have salt, so. You can add that in, I guess.”
“Thanks, Gregory,” Janine says, and he turns his attention towards her while Jacob bounces around his tiny living room looking at everything as though he’s at a museum.
Gregory looks down at the wine in his hand, wrinkling his nose.
“Sorry, he’s like, incapable of not bringing wine when he’s invited to someone’s house for the first time, it’s weird,” Janine says apologetically.
“I mean, he kind of invited himself,” Gregory says idly.
Janine’s eyes widen. “Oh my God, did he? I didn’t realize that. We can go, if you want.”
Gregory feels a jolt of panic. “Oh, no, that’s not what I—it’s fine, I want you.” Janine’s eyes widen just as Gregory’s do. “Here,” he finishes. “I want you here, I mean. You know what I mean. You knew what I meant.”
Janine laughs, nervous and high-pitched. “Yeah, no, yeah, of course I did.”
What the hell is wrong with him? He guesses he can blame the Franklin Institute, but it’s not like they haven’t hung out since then. It’s not like they didn’t talk one on one those last few weeks at school. Though obviously that was at school, and when they weren’t at school they had…
“Where’d Jacob go?” Gregory asks just as Janine calls “Jacob!”
“Yeah?” Jacob says, wandering back to the living room from the kitchen island. He looks between them and narrows his eyes. “Oh, boy. Come on, let’s get to the movie-watching, that’ll help you two relax.”
Jacob pats Gregory on the shoulder and heads over to the couch, picking up the remote.
Just as quickly as it encroached on them, the tension breaks. With his anxiety lowered, Gregory finds himself able to look at the situation from a bird’s eye view.
Okay, they’re still figuring out exactly where they stand with each other in this different setting. That’s fine. That’s normal. They’re normal. Gregory shakes off the awkwardness and, along with Janine, goes over to the couch.
“I rented the Night at the Museum movies,” he says. “Figured we could watch the first one again too. I liked it.” He never would’ve watched it without Janine’s recommendation, but he did like it. It’s silly, but fun, and Gregory’s decided there’s a place for silliness in his life.
“Sounds great,” Janine says, beaming.
Gregory plucks the remote from Jacob’s fingers, plopping down on the couch and feeling a secret thrill when Janine sits down next to him instead of on Jacob’s other side. He likes having her there.
Gregory gets to the first movie, and they start to watch. Gregory’s glad he’s already seen it, because Janine and Jacob are the kind of people who commentate when they watch movies. Somehow, Gregory doesn’t mind. He even throws in some of his own commentary every once in a while. By the time they’ve started on the second movie, Gregory feels warm and loose-limbed.
There’s something like relief blanketing his body; relief that he has people in his life who aren’t looking to drag him places he isn’t all that interested in going. People he can be comfortable with when they’re just staying inside. Who don’t want him to be something he’s not.
They’re halfway through the second movie when Gregory notices a shuffling beside him. He looks over at Jacob, who managed to curl himself up into a ball on the couch at some point and fall fast asleep. Gregory raises his eyebrows, tapping Janine’s shoulder to show her what he’s seeing.
She smiles fondly and then reaches over Gregory to shake Jacob awake, which immediately makes Gregory feel kind of bad. They didn’t even notice Jacob had passed out until now; it’s not like they need a chaperone, so Jacob might as well get some rest.
“Nah, let him sleep,” he says, putting a gentle, fluttering hand on Janine’s arm and pulling it back almost as quickly, like he’s been burned. Or electrocuted. But those are such unpleasant words for a feeling that isn’t unpleasant at all. Mostly he doesn’t want Janine to pull away first. “He must be tired.”
Janine hesitates. “He told me to wake him up if he falls asleep. Something about a night-time routine.”
Gregory shrugs. “He’ll be fine. He was fine all through the field trip, I checked.” At least Gregory thinks he was fine. He had his eyes closed when Gregory crept over to him, feeling like an idiot but also feeling a gentle pull of responsibility, since sleep paralysis sounded legitimately disturbing when he looked it up and he couldn’t help but remember Jacob’s hand rubbing his back.
(When is the last time Gregory hugged someone like that?
Has he ever even hugged Janine like that?
More to the point, why is his compass for affection Janine?
He knows why.)
Janine gives him a little smile. “You checked?”
Gregory shrugs uncomfortably. “Yeah.”
“That’s nice of you,” Janine murmurs before they collapse into silence again.
Without the promise of Jacob’s bright interludes occasionally shining through their conversations, a new shadow of awkwardness falls over them. It makes Gregory ache.
He wants to ask himself what changed between them, but the answer is so obvious it feels embarrassing to poke at it, and it hurts to touch.
“Want to start the third movie?” Janine asks.
“We should rewatch the end of the second,” Gregory says. “‘Cause I got none of that.”
Janine grins at him, a full smile that makes his shoulders relax, and rewinds the movie.
They turn their attention back to the TV screen. That’s when Gregory realizes how close they are; closer than they were before, his thigh brushing Janine’s. He can’t bring himself to mind. It’s not like he has any room to scoot over anyway with Jacob curled up like an armadillo and dead to the world on the other end of the sofa, and Janine’s not trying to move away either. Gregory sinks back against the couch cushions. Janine’s body loosens in concert with his; like she can’t help it. They can’t help but be comforted by each other. Aided by the film, they finally fall back into relaxation.
Unfortunately, the warm, wordless groove he and Janine have re-entered only makes it more jarring when Jacob sits up and starts screaming at the top of his lungs.
Both Gregory and Janine startle, letting out involuntary sounds of alarm while Jacob continues doing a spot-on banshee impression next to them, kicking like he’s trying to fight some invisible assailant on the other end of the couch. His eyes are wide open, but they’re a creepy, vacant kind of wide open, terror-blank. There’s no way he’s awake.
Also, for a grown man, Jacob can pitch his voice pretty damn high. Who knew?
Thanks to their innate self-preservation instincts, both Gregory and Janine jump off the couch to avoid the flailing almost before it starts. Just as automatically, Gregory steps in front of Janine, but then he hesitates as his train of thought stops there. Janine scoots to the side so that she can actually see without him blocking her. Gregory has no idea what to do.
Gregory has no idea what to do way too much of the time, but usually it isn’t so obvious, usually it’s not a— friend in pain in front of him.
Usually.
(Janine is crying. Gregory has never seen her cry before. It makes his heart hurt.
He tries to console her, but he knows that sometimes trying isn’t enough, and reinforcements are necessary.
He takes her to Barbara.)
Gregory doesn’t consider himself soft, or weak, or emotional, or easily moved, or any of the things his father has found unacceptable about him over his lifetime, which is almost all the things.
He’s level-headed.
For example, he doesn’t have nightmares.
(He thinks his worst dreams are sad, because he’ll wake up with tears on his face, though he isn’t a crier.
He never remembers what the dreams are about. He just knows they can’t be good if they’re making him cry.)
But in spite of his general level-headedness, the first thing Gregory thinks to do is try to wake Jacob up.
There are three factors that lead him to do that:
- Worry that Jacob’s screaming will terrify his neighbors.
- Worry about Jacob himself.
- A brief but alarming loss of control. (Also known as fear.)
Gregory lurches forward, though Janine makes a strangled noise that might be an attempt to tell him to stop, grabs Jacob, and shakes him. “Come on, man, you’re just having a bad dream!”
Maybe he should’ve expected the fist that flies out at him, almost clipping his chin, but he doesn’t. That one time Jacob kind of tried to throw hands with Morton aside (which Gregory can barely bring himself to count anyway; Jacob’s so actively, even consciously, non-threatening that his aggression calls to mind an angry Pomeranian puppy at worst), he would never try to hurt anyone, but it seems like he’s at call-an-exorcist levels of “not in control of his body” right now.
Still, Gregory’s interruption makes Jacob finally lose his fight against gravity, and he crashes to the floor. Gregory has to dive to sort of break his fall, but manages it well enough to keep Jacob from hitting his head.
The screaming stops, at least, though Jacob wrenches himself away from Gregory immediately. His eyes are still unfocused, but he’s definitely actually looking at him. He’s looking at something, at least. What’s important is that he’s awake. Gregory feels a surge of relief.
Janine rushes over to Jacob, who scrambles away, baring his teeth like a dog while his chest heaves. He’s gone insanely red, and he looks a little like he’s about to throw up.
Gregory briefly debates grabbing a trash can, but even his analytical mind is brought back to the moment when Jacob gasps out, “What’s happening? What’s—who—when—where—why—how—”
“It’s okay, Jacob,” Janine says in a soothing voice even as Jacob goes and repeats the questions a good journalist should ask oneself (according to Jacob) to himself again.
She reaches out to him, but all he does is the weird teeth-baring thing and spits out a, “Don’t touch me!”
Janine pulls back, hurt.
Jacob scrubs the heel of his hand across his forehead, mostly covering his face as he ducks his head. “Who, what, when, where, why, how,” he mumbles to himself.
“You’re at Gregory’s apartment,” Janine offers hopefully after a tense beat. “With me—Janine—and Gregory. You fell asleep watching TV.”
Catching on, Gregory glances at his watch and says, “It’s 10:37 PM. You had a bad dream.”
Jacob pauses in trying to take the skin off his forehead with the heel of his hand. “I’m confused,” he says miserably.
“About what?” Gregory asks, even though, unfortunately, he’s also kind of confused.
“I don’t feel well.”
“I wouldn’t feel very good after that either,” Janine says sympathetically, words dripping with second-grade-teacher-style empathy.
“Did someone wake me up?”
“Yeah,” Gregory says. “Me.”
“I wasn’t having a bad dream, I was having a night terror. You’re not supposed to wake up someone having a night terror,” Jacob says dully. “Additionally, this is why I told you to wake me up if I fall asleep, Janine.”
“You just said not to wake you up during a night terror,” Gregory points out, automatically jumping to Janine’s defense.
“I mean wake me up before it gets to that point! Before it gets to any point. Like, I get nightmares or sleep paralysis more often lately and that’s generally at a different part of the night, but—that’s not the point. The point is that it’s just…it’s better for me to be prepared to sleep, it’s a whole…a whole thing, and…”
Jacob takes in a shallow breath, and then another, ducking his head again. He’s still sitting on the floor, folded in on himself. For someone whose personality can sometimes be headache-inducingly big, Jacob’s got a real talent for making himself smaller. Gregory doesn’t like to think about it.
“You should get back on the couch,” Janine says, reaching out again. Jacob doesn’t flinch away from the touch this time, but he doesn’t respond to it either, vaguely shrugging her off as he oozes upwards onto the couch, pressing himself against the armrest, knees pulled up to his chest and arms wrapped around them, chin resting on his kneecaps.
There’s a long silence. Jacob buries his face in his knees. Gregory shares a look with Janine, barely noticing that their connection is the one thing that isn’t uncomfortable about this silence.
Gregory shifts from one foot to another before grasping onto a stray thought. “Water!” he says loudly enough that Janine gives him a slightly surprised look and Jacob, who’s clearly feeling some kind of way right now and seems pretty determined to marinate in it, flinches minutely. Trying not to ramble but rambling anyway, Gregory explains, “I’ma get him some water. Yeah, Jacob, you’ll feel better once I—no one ever felt better being dehydrated, y’know?”
Pleased with his solution to this snafu, Gregory rushes over to his tiny kitchen island, grabbing a clean glass (they’re all clean) and filling it with water, making sure not to spill it as he goes back to his couch, where Jacob’s at least managed to slightly change his position so that he’s not curled up against the corner of the couch, but next to Janine, who’s rubbing his back.
Gregory hovers in front of them, hesitating before finally nudging Jacob’s forearm with the glass. “Man, you have to…you have to unfold to take the cup.”
Jacob groans, but reluctantly unfurls, sitting cross-legged on the couch. He gives Gregory a distant look before accepting the proffered cup. “Thanks,” he mumbles, holding the glass with both hands before staring down at it, studying it long enough that Gregory frowns.
“You need to drink it for it to work,” he says patiently.
Jacob rolls his eyes, but he takes a sip of the water just as Gregory’s gaze is drawn to the way Janine is pursing her lips like she’s trying not to smile.
He knows she must be amused by him for some reason—there’s nothing else to smile at here other than him—but he doesn’t mind. It doesn’t make him feel made fun of; it makes him feel seen, and he has to swallow down a smile too. Their eyes meet, and Janine’s expression gently melts into something soft, her lips curving upwards. Gregory allows his own to do the same in response.
Then Jacob’s body jerks, slumping forward like a puppet whose strings have been cut, and he squirms uncomfortably before shaking his head and saying, bitterly, “I hate this.”
It shatters the moment, but Gregory can’t really be pissed at Jacob for that. It might not have been the most appropriate time to have a moment anyway.
Jacob swipes at his face, apparently forgetting the glass of water in his hand and spilling half of it down his front, which…isn’t ideal, since it seems to send him careening out of his exhausted misery into outright anxiety. “Shit, I’m so sorry!” he yelps, breath picking up as he tries to brush the water off his shirt, which obviously doesn’t work and only leads to him dropping the glass on the floor, spilling the last of the water onto the carpet.
“Oh my God!” he half-wails in response, putting his head in his hands.
Janine rubs his back, making sympathetic noises. Gregory, for his part, looms awkwardly before finally picking up the glass. His first instinct is to get more water, but hydration is clearly not the cure-all he’d hoped it would be.
Just from his unsteady breathing, Gregory can gauge that Jacob sounds dangerously close to crying, which he is not here for in any possible way. For a brief, panicked moment, he wonders if Barbara’s in town, but then he looks again, and he sees Janine, now with her arm around Jacob’s shoulders, and a thought hits him with dizzying clarity at a high velocity: no, we got this.
Gregory has a few bottles of water with electrolytes—the ones that he uses to rehydrate after vigorous exercise—in the kitchen. He’ll get one of those instead of the cup. Probably should’ve done that in the first place, now that he thinks of it. He doesn’t have time to kick himself, though.
As quickly as possible, which is pretty quickly, considering how small Gregory’s apartment is and how well-placed everything within it is, Gregory goes to the kitchen and grabs a bottle of water before striding back over to the current occupants of the couch and holding it out to Jacob.
Janine, who’s still rubbing Jacob’s back, glances over at the bottle and then up at Gregory, raising her eyebrows at him and offering him a crooked, bemused smile. Jacob just gives him a vaguely baffled look.
Gregory shrugs. “You still need water. And this one has electrolytes too, so.”
“Gregory, what is your—” Jacob starts, but then Janine nudges his shoulder and he apparently lets it go, taking the water with a mumbling sound that might be a thank you. His hands are shaking badly enough that he struggles to uncap the bottle, but he pulls away when Janine reaches to help him.
“I can do it, Janine, I’m a grown-up,” he snaps, turning his attention back to the cap as Janine raises her hands in surrender, sharing a look with Gregory that’s somewhere between concerned and exasperated.
“Fine, but you don’t get to cry if you spill it everywhere,” Janine warns, though Gregory knows full well she’s not serious.
“Shut up,” Jacob responds sullenly. Janine pats him on the back.
Jacob thankfully not only manages to uncap the water bottle, but also manages to not spill it, which is a relief, because Gregory really thinks he would’ve cried. He takes a couple of gulps of water before setting the bottle down. He doesn’t look like he feels all that much better.
Gregory sighs. He starts to gingerly sit down on the coffee table, thinks better of it, and sits on the couch instead.
The silence that ensues isn’t exactly awkward, but it’s heavy.
Jacob finally says, “I haven’t had a night terror in a while. Unless there’s something Zach’s not telling me. But I can usually tell when I’ve had one, if only because my throat hurts.” He huffs. “I’m not even particularly stressed. Unless I’m always stressed, which is a possibility. Or maybe it’s just my brain yet again sabotaging every social connection I have ever made.”
Gregory frowns. “Nothing’s sabotaged, man. There’ll be other movie nights.”
There’s a brief pause, and then Jacob gives Gregory a sideways look. “Really?”
“Yeah, of course,” Gregory says. “It’s summer, we got plenty of time.”
Jacob gives him a small smile. “Okay.”
Gregory claps him on the shoulder. “Okay.”
“It’s probably time to go home, though,” Janine says from the other side of the couch, sounding sweetly disappointed. She stands, and Jacob and Gregory stand with her. Jacob sways slightly on his feet, grimacing as he shakes out his still-wet shirt. Gregory frowns. “You good to drive?” he asks.
“Janine drove,” Jacob says.
“Oh. Right, cool,” Gregory murmurs, meeting Janine’s eyes. When he does, his breath catches. Sometimes it’s like every time he sees her is the first time he’s ever seen her, but then they fall back into the relationship they’ve created with each other and that’s even better.
(Somewhere, deep down, he might be disappointed that Jacob didn’t stay asleep so he could’ve been alone with Janine for a while longer, getting used to just the two of them again.
It soothes him, though, how easy it was when it was just the two of them.
And there’s comfort in knowing that even when their emotional buffer is the one falling apart, they can deal with it. They’re a good team.
That hasn’t changed.)
When Janine and Jacob are in the hallway, Gregory hands Jacob the bottled water. “Can’t forget this,” he says.
The grins that both Janine and Jacob give him in response are almost painful in their combined brightness. Gregory is helpless to do anything but smile back.
“You’re the best, Gregory,” Janine says with aching fondness.
“I try,” Gregory responds.
“Well…you succeed,” Janine throws over her shoulder while she and Jacob head down the hallway.
“Drive safe,” is the only thing Gregory can say to that, to which Jacob, with his back still turned, gives him a thumbs up.
Gregory feels something in his chest unfurl, blooming like a flower, as he watches his friends leave, knowing he’ll see them again soon.
Knowing they’re all going to be okay.