Work Text:
He fights the urge to write to someone else. One after another, videos from concerts somewhere far away pop up on TikTok. Serbia, Slovenia, Austria, Poland, and God knows how many other countries, the names of which he would never be able to pronounce in understandable English. Jere throws the phone aside and takes a deep breath. The room is spinning before his eyes, like in a fresh morning hangover. But it was too dark and cold outside, and he didn’t even drink. At least he didn't drink anything other than the endless amount of energy drinks that filled his large fridge in his huge and damn empty house.
It will be a very long winter. He knows this for sure. It’s already completely dark outside in Vantaa at six p.m., and he can't help himself. He reaches for the phone, which previously landed on the other end of the sofa. It does not work the first time. Maybe this is a sign. He opens the gallery and scrolls through photographs taken at the end of September. An eternally drunk, happy face looks at him with wrinkles of joy around the eyes and a broad smile from ear to ear. Jokerman. His Jokerman. Same thing. One and the same. He can't help but smile at the cold indifference of the screen and the narrowed eyes. Stupid, so stupid. But he never had a reputation for being a big smart ass, anyway. That's why he continues to smile.
And he feels like something inside him is breaking.
If the space had not separated them, would everything have been the same? Is it a matter of distance, an abyss the length of not the longest flight? The fact is that, no matter how he denies it, the differences between them are no less than the similarities.
- I love you.
No, it is a matter of words. Said neither once, nor twice, nor ten. Much more. The words with which he chained Jere like a dog in a kennel at each subsequent meeting. There were happy hours and minutes when he thought that everything had passed. Time and distance have done their job, he is free, and he can live on as he did before, only now after. And these moments of lightness were erased when the cause of his past harmful thoughts reappeared on the threshold of his house at arm's length. And then he erased this distance as well.
Desire, hunger, longing. All this was much more similar to the situation. They sought each other's attention from the first minutes of acquaintance, they wanted each other, and they got each other, but only until there was the sound of an inaudible announcement about boarding the flight. Still, Jere hoped this feeling, whatever its name, would last a little longer. At least in dreams, in fantasies.
He came and went. But Jere knew that he loved him, and that was enough.
He ignored him and then bombarded him with voice messages and video calls with a scattering of jokes and laughter. At least Jere knew that he loved him.
He flirted with others and then pressed him into the wall, covering his neck and collarbones with hungry kisses until blue marks. Well, you know, he loved in his own way. As best he could.
He who denied any rumor. He who could allow himself to forget about the existence of another and not feel any guilt. He who has not noticed Jere for weeks.
Jere lived because he loved him. Not brotherly, not friendly, not by default. For real.
Jere could not question this knowledge. Not now, when he put his life in this careless hands. But doubts, no matter how hard he chased them away, visited him more and more often.
Sometimes Jere wanted to run away from any thoughts, of which there were especially numerous on such lonely autumn evenings. But he never had it in him, did he? Just as much as he wanted to forget and run away, he wanted to stay. Linger for a moment and feel the bitter-sweet taste of timelessness on his lips. The endless “I love you”. The unattainable “I love you”.
After all, he loved Jere. Occasionally. When the calendar was a little freer. When a new meeting loomed on the horizon. When there was no better option nearby.
And Jere didn't want to think that he deserved more. When he knew that he loved him.
You can only see the big picture from a distance, and only sometimes the big seemed unforgivably small and unnoticeable. And then, like a broken tape: “I love you” in the parking lot at five in the morning, “I love you” in the darkness of the club corridor, “I love you” in the car and the living room on a torn sofa, “I love you” in a drunken message in the middle nights, “I love you” erased hastily in correspondence and never returned.
I love you. Not always, not often, depending on my mood.
Sometimes.
But Jere knows that he loves him back.