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The first rays of the sun are just starting to filter through the wall-wide window as Kevin pads around the kitchen. The loud noise of the coffee machine is jarring against the silence of the near-empty room, but not startling: it is, after all, how most of his mornings begin now. When he first used it, the sound had cut through the house, reaching into the bedroom, and it had awoken the cats and Andrew alike. No one stirs today, and the coffee tastes as it always does: hot and just-sweet-enough and comforting.
He makes one cup for himself, leaves another in the microwave for Neil to reheat when he comes back from his run, and heads to the massive wood table on the other side of the kitchen counter. It is made of oak, its color a deep, rich brown that somehow compliments perfectly the pale green chairs around it. The combination is a compromise: Andrew had requested a table big enough for all of them to spread their papers on and still have room to eat, Neil had fallen in love with the chairs during their trip to the furniture store, and Kevin had bought it without complaining about how awful they would look next to their brand new second-hand table. He is glad he didn’t, because it doesn’t even look that bad, a little eye-catching at first and just solid and present now, and because it made Neil comfortable enough to be able to sit without changing positions every five minutes.
The overnight oatmeal that spent the night in the fridge and half an hour on the table since Neil put it there before leaving is the perfect temperature when Kevin digs into it. He learned to cook after leaving college, they all did, and the newfound control over his food had been salvatory. He can enjoy eating now, appreciate the effort put into it and the taste, the texture, the balance of the food itself. Andrew has somehow managed to compose the perfect combination of cinnamon and apples and just the faintest traces of chocolate, and from the first bite Kevin knows he is going to pretty much lick the bowl clean.
It is a new thing, too, the chocolate, and the sugar in general. He won’t ever love it as much as Andrew does, but it is fine, as long as he isn’t scared of it anymore. Because he used to be scared, used to fear what his body needed to survive, used to ignore it all under the guise of control and discipline. He isn’t anymore, the result of years of work and effort and healing, and he is never more grateful for it than when he eats something Andrew made (because of course the only things he doesn’t refuse to cook are desserts) without chastising himself for it.
He is deep enough in his thoughts that he doesn’t hear Neil come in, healed enough that he doesn’t jump at the low hum of the microwave or the sudden noise of a chair being pulled in front of him. Neil looks a certain kind of happy after a run that never shows at any other point in time, a little giddier, a lot more prone to smiles. It is a fact that Neil doesn’t smile often, another fact that he probably never will, but he is more likely to smile after a run, and all of these things can be true at once.
He has pressed his hands against the hot ceramic of his coffee mug, cheeks pink from the cold outside, his hair falling in his eyes. His mouth, when he presses it against Kevin’s, is cold and soft like it always is after a run at this time of the year. Kevin tilts his bowl towards him when they split up, then goes back to savoring the taste when Neil shakes his head. Most days, he waits for Andrew to wake up so they can a bowl of cereals, but sometimes he is hungry enough to accept Kevin’s offer.
They sit in silence until Kevin gets up to put both of their mugs along with his bowl and spoon in the dishwasher. When he turns around Neil is not there anymore, the distant sound of the shower starting to fill the room instead. He grabs his notebook and the book he left on the coffee table last night, and settles on the couch for a quiet morning of reading. He learns about Máel Dúin sailing away to avenge his father, makes a note of researching the Island of Joy from The Voyage of Bran, too focused on his reading to even think about getting up and retrieving the book from his library now.
At some point Neil curls himself against his side, idly petting one of the cats while watching some TV show where people deep-clean the house of those who cannot do it themselves. Andrew comes downstairs a little after the rays of light have stretched from the kitchen counter to the sofa, one of the cats perilously perched on his shoulder, clad in one of Kevin’s soft woolen sweaters and Neil’s blue sweatpants.
He settles down on the sofa next to Neil, two spoons inside his bowl of cereal, and when Kevin emerges from his book they have moved from the cleaning show to the Great British Bake Off. Neil has a bundle of yarn on his knees, two knitting needles clicking quietly in his hands, the sounds almost lost under the low drum of the rain against the roof and the show’s almost muted speech. From time to time Andrew says some incomprehensible thing like “SL1 GSR”, his mouth close enough to Neil’s shoulder that it is almost inaudible, and Neil merely hums in response. Row after row a sweater sleeve is starting to grow beneath Neil’s experimented hands, the repetitive motion soothing the part of him that wants to move at all times.
They watch one, two, three episodes before Andrew’s stomach makes a noise that prompts Kevin into filling three plates of the leftover lasagna Neil cooked two days ago, heating them in the microwave before handing them to the loves of his life sitting on the sofa. They eat while Prue Leith and Paul Hollywood put the remaining candidates through trials and errors, some of which earn a scoff from Andrew.
None of them want to move after the plates have been relocated to the coffee table and Neil’s head onto Kevin’s lap, so they collectively elect to skip dessert in favor of a snack later. Kevin drops a hand into Neil’s hair, weaving his fingers through the strands, and the attention has him nuzzling closer to his stomach, eyes dropping close soon after. Kevin seeks Andrew’s gaze, who gives him a bored look that Kevin fluently translates as his what-did-you-expect expression. No matter what his face may be doing, he still brings down the book Kevin asks him to fetch from the little library he has organized upstairs, before dropping a little kiss in his hair at Kevin’s yes and crossing the living room to start brewing something in the kitchen. Not literally brewing, of course, but getting pots and pans out, and soon the smell of caramel is filling the space.
Kevin gets lost in his book again, one hand turning the pages and the other delicately scratching Neil’s scalp, but the oven’s ding has them both rousing from the couch to settle on the green chairs instead. Andrew baked some kind of brownie, but with caramel and sweet-tasting nuts inside the batter, and it tastes delicious as always. Maybe Kevin is a little biased, maybe he isn’t, maybe he would eat anything Andrew put in front of him.
They head outside after clearing away the plates and safely tucking the leftovers in the fridge, away from the cats’ curious paws, and after spending an undisclosed amount of time in from of the closet in the hallway, trying to match the right gloves together. In the end, Andrew puts on the brown pair, Neil the orange one, and Kevin gets the striped, multicolored, and mismatched set Renee brought back from her trip to Finland. They keep the cool, crisp air away better as Kevin fills his lungs with the scent of rain and petrichor.
They chat idly among the thinning trees, about Neil’s newest running loop, about the spices Andrew wants to try to incorporate into brown sugar, about Kevin’s book. He tells them about Máel Dúin, and Andrew says it would be a good topic to discuss on Friday during the next meeting of his Gaeilge group. Neil mentions the bird he spotted in a tree this morning, and they spend the rest of their walk trying to determine what species it could have belonged to.
When they reach their house again Kevin busies himself with starting a fire in the fireplace for a little while, watching the flames dance for a longer while. It is Andrew’s voice that makes him join Neil and him at the table, slowly putting the pieces of a puzzle together. The final image is supposed to be a reproduction of Auguste Renoir’s The Coast at Cagnes, but for now the only things visible are the trees of the upper right corner. Together they manage to make the whole right side and a bit of the middle emerge from the scattered pieces, and they drink a bowl of tomato soup as they finish the bottom part.
None of them feel like finishing it up, and so they migrate to the sofa after agreeing to deal with it tomorrow morning. Andrew cuts three apples into dices before sprinkling sugar and cinnamon and something else that Kevin doesn’t recognize into the bowl, and they eat dessert while searching for something to watch.
They skip to the DVDs when it appears that neither the TV nor YouTube have anything interesting to offer, and Neil’s needles start moving again as Little Miss Sunshine starts playing. The movie passes just like their late morning did, except this time Kevin’s fingers are drawing curved patterns onto Neil’s ankles, slowly making their way towards his calf, while Andrew’s make braids appear from little strands of hair.
Surprisingly, no one falls asleep. Unsurprisingly, Kevin still carries Neil into their bedroom, gives up on making him brush his teeth, slides his clothes off of him and dresses him in one of Andrew’s old, oversized shirts instead. He leaves him nestling inside the soft, plush bedding to head towards the promise of a long, relaxing, hot shower. He keeps his promise to himself, does the rest of his nightly routine on autopilot, and steps out of the bathroom to join Neil and Andrew onto their bed. Neil is on his stomach in the middle, as usual, one hand woven with Andrew’s.
Andrew himself has his back to the wall, as usual, his eyes relaxed where they watch over Neil, almost sleepy when they turn towards Kevin. Not quite, because it always takes Andrew the better part of an hour to fall asleep, but enough to let Kevin know this will be a good night. He tilts his head to the side, leans towards Andrew when he receives a nod, bends down enough to bring their lips together. He settles down on Neil’s other side, after, who drags his remaining arm around his waist and nuzzles into his cotton-clad chest. He lets out a small, content sigh into the fabric, and drifts off to sleep. Kevin murmurs a goodnight to both of loves of his life before following him, Andrew’s watchful gaze on him, always.