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Kevin rushes through the airport, a smile on his face and his unlocked phone in hand.
Jeremy ♡: We’re waiting in arrivals, see you soon! :)
The crowds of LAX split before him to let him through; nothing can stop him today. He feels as though he’s travelling on air. Even the flight had seemed to pass impossibly quickly when Kevin let his mind wander. Jeremy’s lips curling into a smile, his firm grasp on Kevin’s shoulders. A pair of gray eyes watching him close.
The only other thing that has ever made him feel like this — like he’s flying — is Exy. But Kevin isn’t in Los Angeles to play Exy. He’s only here to see Jeremy and Jean, and just the knowledge that they’re waiting for him gets him rushing through baggage claim like he’s rushing towards the goal. Maybe he is.
He spots them right away. Jean’s dark hair is visible over the heads of the flocks of people around them, and just as Kevin has spotted him, he also spots Jeremy ducking around people to spot Kevin. Their eyes meet, and Kevin is unable to ignore the skip of his heartbeat.
“Kevin! Over here!”
Feeling how his face flushes at Jeremy’s voice, Kevin ducks his head as he walks towards them. It backfires as he comes close, when his eyes instantly catch on Jeremy’s face, just below him, and Jeremy’s pink mouth splitting open in a smile. The bustle of people around them reminds Kevin that they are in public, and he forces himself to look away before he does something reckless.
Looking away, he comes face to face with Jean instead. Embarrassingly enough, and not knowing why, he only feels his face heat further.
“Hi,” Kevin says. It comes out breathy, and he clears his throat. “Long time no see.”
At least, it feels like it. In reality, it’s been less than five months since Kevin last saw them in person, but that had surprised Kevin when he’d counted on the flight. Even with his constant texting with Jeremy, it feels like years.
“It’s so good to see you,” Jeremy says, stepping closer until Kevin can smell his cologne. The feeling in his chest crescendoes as Jeremy raises his arms and throws them around Kevin’s shoulders—
Except only one arm slings across Kevin’s frame. Just as Kevin opens his eyes in surprise, or disappointment, Jeremy pulls away. Taking a step back, Kevin’s eyes travel from Jeremy to Jean back to Jeremy, and then to their hands where they’re connected. Oh.
Kevin swallows around the strange jealousy that fills him instantly. He’s been struck with the realization that he’s never held Jeremy’s hand before — that he has never held anyone’s hand before. He almost expects the image of them holding onto each other will disappear as he blinks, like a mirage, but it only becomes more real and more difficult to ignore.
Jeremy only has to move his arm an inch or two to elbow Jean softly in the side. “Kevin,” Jean says, like it’s a struggle to force the non-greeting out, and Jeremy lights up at the sound of his voice.
“Jean,” Kevin says, suddenly unsure of himself. The feeling of having missed something everyone else has picked up on isn’t unusual, but he’s never felt like this with Jeremy. He’s never had to.
“Let’s catch up back at home,” Jeremy says after a moment’s strange silence. Just as he’s said it, Kevin can feel the noise of the crowd getting to him. Maybe Jeremy can tell— except Jeremy is looking at Jean, who’s wearing a pinched expression.
“Let’s,” Kevin says, but his words sound hollow.
—
Kevin had tried to shake off the feeling of wrongness, he really tried. He didn’t want to ruin this with his disappointment — with what? he asks himself — but as Jean took the passenger seat and silently relegated Kevin to the back, he felt the illusion shatter.
Five months (or longer, really) had been plenty of time for Kevin to daydream. During endless drills at night practices, or on his runs, or in his bed late at night, he’d let himself think of Jeremy. Of how they would meet again, just the two of them this time. After their brief meeting on court in semi-finals last year, and then his and Andrew’s visit in August, he’d been longing for a private moment.
The hour-long car ride, when Jean replies to Jeremy’s easy chatter as Kevin stews silently in anxiety, allows Kevin to wonder about this morning. He pulls up his phone to read Jeremy’s last text again.
We’re waiting in arrivals, see you soon! :)
We. Kevin should have been able to figure out that Jean would have been there with Jeremy. He certainly hadn’t been surprised to see Jean there; maybe, on some level, he had been expecting it. He doesn’t know what it means that the disappointment hadn’t set in until later.
He doesn’t know what it means when Jean smiles at Jeremy and Kevin wants him to turn and smile at Kevin, too.
—
“I’m so sorry, Kevin. Jeez, I’ve been lousy at making small talk, haven’t I?” Jeremy smiles bashfully at him over the hood of the car as he rounds it. They had come to a stop outside of their new apartment building, and now Jean is walking up to the door with the keys rattling in his hand.
“It’s okay. You were talking with Jean.” The words fall from his lips heavy as stones, but Jeremy only nods as if accepting Kevin’s understanding.
“He’ll want to show you the new apartment,” Jeremy as he falls into step with Kevin. In a stage whisper, he adds, “He keeps your postcards on the fridge.”
As if having heard them, Jean turns around. “Are you coming?” he asks, and Jeremy hurries towards him with a blinding grin. Behind them, Kevin feels like his legs have stopped working, stumbling slowly across the parking garage.
He wants to call for Jeremy too; an ‘are you coming?’ to make Jeremy look back at him, concerned, letting Kevin fall into his arms. The blend of jealousy, disappointment and confusion is spreading until his limbs feel slow and heavy. Instead, he forces himself to keep walking up the steps after the two of them, ignoring his heart when it tells him to come closer and closer and closer to the heat of their bodies.
The barking when Jean unlocks their apartment door derails that train of thought. Right, Kevin thinks, startled by the small black nose poking through the door crack, they have a dog now.
When Jean opens the door wider, the dog runs out, tail wagging so strongly as to make its whole tiny body swing from side to side. “Oh, did you miss us? I missed you. Yes I did, I missed you,” Jeremy babbles, hunching over the dog.
“We were only gone for two hours,” Jean says, but when Kevin looks up at him, he looks fond. Jeremy shoots Jean a sparkling smile before his eyes shift to Kevin.
“Go say hello to Kevin, Jabberwocky. Say hi, boy.”
The dog, Jabberwocky, goes to Jean first, sniffing his shoes and trousers and brushing his side against Jean’s leg until Jean bends down to pat him gently. Just as he’s done so, Kevin sees the dog spot him for the first time, and Jabberwocky bundles over. He almost takes a step back as it comes closer, but manages to stop himself. It’s not fear, just unsurety.
Jeremy doesn’t catch the difference between the two, and quickly calls Jabberwocky back. “Come here, boy. Sorry to set him on you like that, Kev! He’s really nice but if you’re scared we could keep him in the girls’ room for the weekend.”
“No,” Kevin says. “I was just… unprepared. I haven’t met a lot of dogs.” It’s easy to share this truth with Jeremy, however insignificant it could seem. With anyone else, any hints at his sheltered childhood would have been a vulnerability. With Jeremy, it just feels right.
Jeremy’s smile turns lopsided as he settles his fingers in the dog’s straggly fur. “You’re gonna love him,” he says, and Kevin doesn’t know whom he’s addressing.
To his surprise, Jean takes the lead and is the one to lead him through the different rooms, explaining that Catalina and Laila are away for the weekend. Every square inch of the apartment tells Kevin of a life without him. If he’d been asked about which people he was closest with before, he would have felt confident in answering Jean and Jeremy. Jean had been through it all with him, and when Kevin left, he’d found solace with Jeremy. But as he walks through the rooms that don’t look anything like he’d imagined them to, and listens with half an ear to anecdotes he’s never heard before, he can’t help but feel that some part of it just had been himself. Making up the gaps in his understanding of them when they were not close enough. Only the memory of his postcards, stuck to the fridge alongside bills, receipts, and take-out menus, keep him afloat.
Kevin tracks after Jean, but spends more time watching Jean than he does looking at the room. He looks so… comfortable. When Jeremy comes up next to him, Jean only softens further. Every time he looks back at Kevin, that look remains for a moment, and Kevin feels himself soften in turn.
At the end of the short tour of the apartment, Kevin is led to a bedroom. His heart skips a beat, measuring the width of the bed with his eyes, wondering how many it would hold. He takes a step inside to put his bags down, and turns when neither Jean nor Jeremy follow him inside.
“We haven’t used this room in a while, but I think Jab likes to sleep on the bed in here, so just holler if he’s bothering you,” Jeremy says from the doorway. Kevin watches as he shoots Jean a quick look, and turns. “I’m going to get him his dinner.”
Jean stands listening to Jeremy’s steps for a second, then steps over the threshold into the room. As he does so, he steps into the last rays of sunlight creeping through the windowpanes, and his pale skin lights up in gold. He’s breathtaking, and Kevin can’t help but think that Jeremy shines through him.
Kevin is caught off guard when Jean suddenly speaks. “We are dating,” he says, point-blank. It takes Kevin a moment to realize that this “we” is not Kevin and Jean and their secret alliance, hidden from the eyes constantly on them, but whatever thing Jean and Jeremy are. It’s only then that the second half of Jean’s statement catches up to him.
“Dating?” The word rings in his ears.
Kevin can read any expression on Jean’s face; he’s seen them all before. But he can’t believe the proud confirmation he sees there. It only lasts until Jean looks back at him, and whatever he sees in Kevin’s face makes his own screw up in frustration. “Can you not be happy—”
“But we are dating.” The words slip out before Kevin can stop them.
Jean’s face twitches until it settles into what Kevin is sure is a mirror of his own confusion. “We— what?”
“Jeremy and I… Didn’t he tell you?” Kevin hears his words come out weak, but there’s not enough breath left in his body to say them with any confidence.
Jean blinks at him, and then Kevin watches as his face shifts into unfamiliar pity. “He has told me you have slept together.”
Silence sits heavy in the room as Kevin tries to piece his words together. Slept together. Slept together. They had slept together, but had Jeremy mentioned how Kevin had pressed kisses into his palm, how Jeremy had tangled his fingers through his hair, how they had laughed into each others’ mouths? Slept together, past tense. Kevin sits down on the side of the bed, suddenly freezing, as his world turns cold again.
Jean’s big grey eyes are watching him intently when Kevin looks back up, but Kevin’s can’t stand them. He knows Jean is looking at him and understanding every expression on Kevin’s face, he knows Jean’s mind is tracking the same lines as Kevin’s. That familiar knowledge, which has always been a comfort, is suddenly too much.
“Leave,” Kevin says, but Jean doesn’t make a move, either closer or farther away. “Go to him.” The last word comes out pained, like it’s been pulled from his throat, and Jean startles. Kevin almost expects him to come closer, but instead, Jean leaves.
His next breath escapes him like a silent scream. He feels unmoored, as if the very foundations of his life have been pulled away underneath his feet. Jean’s words echo unbearably loud in his head, and he just needs them gone, needs the confusion gone. Before he’s even made a plan, he’s pulled up his phone and dialed Andrew.
“What?”
Andrew’s voice coming over the phone speaker is crackly, but comforting nonetheless. Kevin entertains the idea of saying he wants to go home, or of telling Andrew to come get him, but what comes out is, “Where’s the line between sleeping together and dating?”
A louder crackle, and then Andrew’s voice comes back, closer. “What happened?”
Kevin lets out a chuckle that threatens to turn into a sob. “Nothing, apparently.”
“Kevin.”
“I thought… I thought it was more. It was more to me. I wouldn't have risked it for anything less.”
“Have you been drinking?”
“No. I’m at their apartment, in their spare bedroom.” If Jean and Jeremy weren’t sharing, there wouldn’t be an empty room for me. He shivers. “I thought… I thought I would be sharing with Jeremy.”
Andrew’s silence over the speaker is deafening. At some level, Kevin expects him to make a big deal of it, or hang up, or never talk to him again. Of course, Andrew doesn’t.
“Tell me what happened.”
—
In the Nest, Kevin had two secrets. In many ways, they were the only things he got to have for himself, withheld from Riko’s hungry eyes. There were his and Jean’s secret French lessons, whispered in minutes that slipped through the cracks of their packed schedule. How Kevin would watch Jean’s lips to replicate their movement, how his lips pursed when he when he called Kevin tu. And then there was Jeremy Knox.
Kevin had known that he wasn’t entirely successful about keeping Jeremy a secret, especially not from Riko. In many ways, Riko could probably tell before Kevin ever did how Kevin would do a double take whenever he saw Jeremy, and then let his eyes follow him too long. Riko must have known about the posters. But he didn’t know about Kevin and Jeremy meeting.
The first time, Kevin had tried to convince himself that shoving his tongue into Jeremy’s mouth and the sound he let out when Jeremy put his hands on his waist was just about having something that Riko had never staked a claim on. It had all felt somewhat incidental; their teams had played against each other, and Riko had made a small mistake in the first half. It hadn’t mattered; the Ravens, as always, had still won, but Riko had still been called away by Tetsuji after the game. When Jeremy had called for Kevin, there was nothing to tether him to the Nest’s darkness.
Instead, there had been the sun. Press photographs of Jeremy never did him justice, Kevin thought as he had approached him in the empty hallways beyond the court, with a smile that seemed to sparkle even under dim fluorescent lights.
Jeremy had congratulated Kevin and the Ravens on the win, but for the first time, Kevin had not cared about Exy. He only cared that the praise was coming from Jeremy’s mouth. Neither of them had stopped until they had been standing face-to-face, toe-to-toe, and, looking back, Kevin knows that it would have been impossible for Jeremy to miss how Kevin’s eyes could not leave the curve of his mouth.
Jeremy had paused, he remembered that much, and Kevin had fallen into him. It was barely a kiss, just a hard press of their lips and noses when Kevin clashed into him, and then Kevin had pulled away in shock. He was, fundamentally, not a reckless person. Looking back, he wondered if he just hadn’t had something worth being reckless for before.
Kevin remembers Jeremy looking into his eyes, Kevin’s shock mirrored, but whatever he found there caused him to lean in slowly, his hand creeping up to angle Kevin’s head so that the next kiss could be gentle.
In the weeks after, Kevin would uselessly try to count how many times they had separated and come back together and compare the number to how many times he had kissed the team’s girls under Riko’s watchful eye. But measuring Jeremy’s affection in numbers had been impossible, especially when their lips had not left each others’ for long.
There did not go a single day before the first and second time they met in private when Kevin did not think of Jeremy. When he ran up and down the court’s hardwood, he thought of Jeremy. When he heard Riko’s sleeping breaths from across the room, he closed his eyes and thought of Jeremy. And when he dug out the posters to look over them in private, or to show them to Jean, he thought of Jeremy, and the thoughts and memories encompassed him.
Not just memories; his and Jeremy’s sporadic conversations over text had turned to an almost daily occurrence. Keeping up with the time outside the Nest was difficult, but Jeremy never mentioned anything when Kevin accidentally texted when Jeremy was still asleep. And while Kevin couldn’t tell Jeremy about everything, he told him enough to make it feel like Jeremy was right there, listening to him. Never about their schedules, their practices, the Nest or the Moriyamas, but about the things no one else had ever listened to him talk about; history, Ireland, his mother.
The second time, Kevin and Riko were in California for a sponsorship photoshoot. They were sitting in a waiting area when Kevin looked up, unbidden, and saw Jeremy coming down a hallway. Jeremy had called his name when he spotted him, and Kevin had tried and failed to hide his smile from Riko. When Jeremy had greeted Riko, Riko didn’t respond, and didn't say anything else until he was called into the room with the cameras.
As soon as they had been left alone, Kevin had stood up and sprung onto Jeremy. He remembers saying stupid things; how he’d thought of Jeremy, how he’d dreamt of him, likely. And Jeremy’s eyes had sparkled like it had been the first time he’d ever heard such praise.
So he’d babbled his praise incoherently into Jeremy’s mouth until he realized he’d started rocking his body against Jeremy’s solid muscle and bone. He’d felt the blush creep higher and started to come to a stop, when Jeremy had spread his hand on Kevin’s hip. Kevin had taken it as encouragement, and they had continued grinding and kissing and panting until Kevin had pushed himself into Jeremy’s splayed hands and fallen apart with his forehead against Jeremy’s. Before he’d caught his breath, the door to the other room had creaked open. Kevin had jumped several feet away from Jeremy, but he knew Riko’s face as well as he knew his own. And Riko’s eyes on him as he called Kevin in to be photographed let Kevin know that Riko suspected something.
The months between that and the third time had been filled with fear. Why Riko never confronted him outright is a mystery to Kevin. He got rid of most of his pictures of Jeremy just to be safe, and tried to downplay how much more he wanted to watch a Trojans’ game than any other.
Instead, Riko took it out on Jean. The words still echo, ringing in Kevin’s skull, “Queers don’t belong on my Perfect Court.” Kevin had already gotten rid of the posters, and had made sure not to mention Jeremy in front of either of them. All of his time was spent watching Jean, making sure he wouldn’t disappear when Kevin turned his back.
Still, he could not stop thinking about Jeremy. The third time, Kevin made sure they got a whole night. He could remember a couple of times during his years in the Nest when Riko had been called away on Moriyama business. The first time, he had asked why, and Riko had hit him. It had not been his place to ask about Moriyama business. Every time following that, the feelings of relief and discomfort of being alone had led to a restlessness that made Kevin try to release as much energy as he could on the Court.
The third time, that restless energy did not go to Exy. When Kevin had heard that Jeremy would be in Cincinnati during the night of Riko’s absence, he hadn’t needed to think twice before asking for the name of their hotel. When that day finally arrived, Kevin had sneaked out of his room and been on the interstate in the blink of an eye.
Jeremy had been surprised to see him, Kevin had been high on the thrill of not being with Riko, in a hotel room in another state. He hadn’t spent too much time thinking about what it all meant, as long as he could be with Jeremy for that night.
—
Just as he’s hesitating on telling Andrew about the rest of that night, the door creaks open, and Kevin stills. He’d tried to keep the tears at bay, he really had, but it had been in vain. Andrew has remained silent, but Kevin didn’t need him to say anything when he’s perfectly able to come to a conclusion himself; it had always been him who initiated, it had always been him who looked for more. And when there hadn’t been, he had imagined it.
He makes a frankly embarrassing noise as he sucks snot and tears in and looks toward the door to see… Jabberwocky. He trots across the floor until he’s by the side of Kevin’s bed, looking up at Kevin with big, brown eyes. It’s almost as if he’s begging for something.
“No,” he says as Jabberwocky places one paw on the mattress.
“Kevin?” Andrew asks.
“No— I was talking to the dog.” Kevin hears his own voice come out thick and wobbly.
There’s a brief silence over the line, and then, “They have a dog?”
Jabberwocky jumps onto the bed, and Kevin doesn’t say anything. He can’t. They have a dog, and what did he have? The idea of his relationship with Jeremy is quickly falling apart, and Kevin doesn’t know how much of himself was built upon it. Those few moments away from Riko were the few moments of hope he’d had. And he’d seemingly created it all from his imagination and the meetings that Kevin always initiated. When he erases all of that, and all of his imagination, there’s not much left. And now Jeremy and Jean have a dog together.
Jabberwocky settles his head in Kevin’s lap and lets out a whine that sounds embarrassingly much like Kevin’s own sniffles into his phone.
“I’m so stup—”
“Jabberwocky?” Jeremy’s voice from outside the room has Kevin scrambling to push the button to end the call and wiping at his face. Not a second later, he can hear the door creaking open behind his back and Jeremy’s voice again. “Jab, don’t bother Kev— Kevin?”
“Mm?” Kevin doesn’t trust his voice enough to say anything more, but apparently, he doesn’t need to.
Jeremy steps slowly across the room, and when he comes to a stop, the mattress sinks under his weight. Kevin can only turn his neck slightly away and hope Jeremy doesn’t look at him too closely. But it’s not a lucky day. Kevin wants to flinch away from the hand that settles on his arm, but he only pushes closer.
“Jean told me what you said,” Jeremy says, his voice gentle. “I’m so sorry, Kevin. I really didn’t know, but that doesn’t make it any better. I should have… I should have known, I should have said someth—”
“No.” Kevin’s voice is rough. “Don’t apologize. You did nothing wrong.”
“I hurt you. I didn’t mean to, but it’s wrong anyway.”
Kevin exhales, his breath shaking. “That’s on me. I was imagining things, I guess.” When he looks up, Jeremy’s looking at him with those large, dark eyes that had made things so easy to imagine. As Kevin’s caught in them, he can’t stop his words from coming. “But I just wanted—”
He manages to stop himself before he starts crying again, but it’s close, and from Jeremy’s eyes Kevin can tell that he’d seen it. The truth is embarrassing; Kevin wanted to be wanted.
“Kevin, I’m so, so sorry. I thought we were on the same page, I would have made sure we talked about it otherwise. We should have still talked about it— I should have brought it up! I forgot that not everyone does it like— that.”
His words only serve to make Kevin want to sink through the floor. He has to assume that he was only one of many hookups, one of many men who would worship the ground Jeremy walked on.
The horror at this revelation must show on his face, because Jeremy quickly continues. “I didn’t mean it like that! You were always more important to me than— any of the others. You’ve always been one of my dearest— friends, Kevin. But when you called me Jean, I—”
The door is thrown open, and Kevin’s heart stops. Jean’s eyes are wide as he looks from Kevin to Jeremy and back again, but Kevin can’t gather his thoughts enough to know what to say.
“I— I did?” he asks instead, and immediately regrets it.
Jeremy also seems hesitant on what to do, but can only gape for so long. “Once or twice.”
Jean’s looking at Kevin like he wants an explanation, but Kevin can’t think of what to say.
Instead, Jeremy speaks again. “When you called me Jean, I thought… I thought maybe I was a stand-in for someone else.”
A moment’s silence. Then, “Kevin?”
Kevin has never been able to say no to Jean; he looks up. At once, he’s seeing Jean as he’s seen him hundreds of times before, and in a new light. He’s unable to hide these feelings from himself any longer, and he needs to let them out.
“I wouldn’t have done that on purpose, and I can’t recall it now, but if I said your name, Jean, it’s because… it’s all I knew. In those moments, I was so happy, in a way I have always been with you. Je t’aime, Jean,” he whispers. “Je t’aime,” he says, louder, because he can be loud about it now. “I know I’ve been bad at showing you I do, but I hope you’ll let me make up for it. In any way.”
Jean exhales quietly, and slowly wipes his eyes with his sleeve. “I have always loved you,” he says, quietly. It’s not news, but it’s earthshattering nonetheless.
Kevin had nearly forgotten about Jabberwocky, but is reminded of his head in his lap when he starts whining in Jeremy’s direction. Just as Kevin looks back to see Jeremy getting off the bed, Jean says, “Don’t go.”
Jeremy opens his mouth as if to say something, but Jean continues. “I love you, Jeremy. Kevin loves you too, I know it.” When Jeremy looks at him, Kevin just nods once, feeling himself blush. “And you— love me.”
“Yes,” Jeremy whispers. Jean smiles quietly for a second before he continues.
“And Kevin means a lot to you.”
Blood rushes to Kevin’s ears; he can’t bear to hear the answer. But Jeremy is quick to nod, and looks back at Kevin. “Kevin, you’ve always been so important to me. You have always been there, even when I thought I had no one. But then you would send me a text, and I would forget what anyone else said about me. When we kissed, and then did more than kissing, I didn’t let myself think it was anything more. I would never have been able to believe I deserved something like that. Like… you.
“I haven’t said it before because I didn’t know how, but I do love you, Kevin.”
Kevin looks into Jeremy’s large, round eyes, and sees nothing but truthfulness. Once again, he has to blink away tears. “I love you, too. I love you both, and I will do so for as long as you will let me, in any way you will let me.”
Jean and Jeremy look at him, and then at each other at once. “Wait just a second,” Jean says, and they both watch as Kevin nods dumbly.
They leave, but he can still see their shadows just outside the door. Suddenly reminded that he’s in the real world, in Jean and Jeremy’s apartment, and not in some dream, Kevin reaches down and tangles his fingers in Jabberwocky’s scraggly fur. Jabberwocky sighs, content.
Kevin doesn’t have to stew in his anxiety for long; after only a couple of minutes, they both return. As much as he wants to, he won’t allow himself to read too much into their content smiles.
He expects either of them to say anything, but as Jean walks up to him where Kevin is still sitting on the edge of the mattress, he’s silent. Slowly, with shaking hands, he reaches up to gently grasp Kevin’s face. The kiss he presses to Kevin’s forehead is slow and breathtaking.
Kevin can feel Jean’s cool breath against the wet spot on his forehead when Jean talks. “We would like you— with us. All three of us, together. There is still so much,” and Kevin knows he means between us, between me and you, “but I never want to not be with you.”
“Neither do I,” Jeremy says. Jean pulls his hand away from Kevin’s cheek, and Jeremy is quick to replace it. “Do you get it? All three of us, together. We all love each other, we are all happy when we’re with each other.”
Kevin nods, lost for words. He can’t let himself believe in things too beautiful to be true, but what else could Jeremy be saying?
“Can I kiss you?” Jeremy asks, and for the first time that day, Kevin knows exactly where he stands.
“Yes.”
—
Kevin wakes up to the sound of a phone ringing. When he reaches to turn it off, he inadvertently throws his arm around another body, and for a moment he exists out of place, out of time, and he’s in some kind of fantasy. But the phone keeps ringing, and he cracks his eyes open to see Jeremy’s very real smile. Behind him is Jean, his eyes still shut but his face painless, content.
“Good morning,” Jeremy whispers. Kevin doesn’t even attempt a reply, only blinks slowly as his mind considers going back to slumber, maybe with his head next to Jeremy’s on the same pillow. Or with Jeremy as a pillow.
Before he can decide, Jean makes him startle awake again as he turns to grab Kevin’s phone from the bedside table and puts it to his ear. “What?”
Though he doesn’t know who it is on the other line, Kevin thinks whoever called now deserves Jean’s acerbic tone. “Who is it?” he mumbles.
“The little goalkeeper,” Jean says, turning over. For a moment, Kevin can do nothing more than watch the expanses of Jean’s skin in the pale sheets and his bedhead, stunned. Then he processes Jean’s words. “Oh, fuck.”
He’d forgotten spending most of last night having a breakdown over the phone, and then disappearing on Andrew. He can only hope his self-appointed bodyguard isn’t halfway to California already.
Jean stretches over Jeremy to pass Kevin his phone, and doesn’t jolt with electricity as their fingers brush like Kevin does. When his hands are empty, he lets his arm fall around Jeremy.
Before Kevin can decide on what to say, Andrew barks a “What the fuck,” into the phone.
“What?” Kevin asks, after not thinking of anything better to say.
“Why did you disappear and go silent?”
“Jeremy came looking for Jabberwocky,” Kevin says. “And then we talked, and it… went well.”
“It went well, and now Jean answers your calls. Did you talk, or did you fuck?”
Kevin feels his face go hot, and Jeremy smiles into his pillow. “We talked,” Kevin says, a bit petulantly. Then, “I know where we stand now.”
Jeremy’s smile goes funny, and Kevin wants to tell him again that it wasn’t his fault. Instead, he lets his free hand find Jeremy’s and squeezes it briefly, before doing the same with the hand Jean has slung across Jeremy.
“You sound happy,” Andrew says. The non-question makes Kevin startle; it’s so like Andrew, and so un-like him at once.
In the silence, he looks back at Jeremy’s bleach blond bedhead and sleepy smiles, at his dimples and freckled skin. And he looks at Jean’s inquisitive eyes and feels the scars on his hand, still resting next to Kevin’s.
“I am,” he says.