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Will wakes up to sunlight trying valiantly to get in his eyes and a warm weight pinning his left arm to the mattress.
He knows before he even opens his eyes that it’s Jem on his arm, because Tessa sleeps on the right, closer to the wall, no matter who’s in the middle, and he’d feel her leg curled around his because she sleeps all spread out. Like a very cuddly, very attractive octopus.
His second thought, after this, is oh my god I’ve turned domestic .
The world is an impressionist painting without his glasses - think Haystacks not Starry Night - and he can make out a blob of dyed silver hair, and the roughly half a goddamn metre of mattress that Jem could be sleeping on instead of the entire length of Will’s arm - not that Will’s really complaining, but if asked he would bring up that by all laws of physics Jem, who is thin as a rail, shouldn’t be as heavy as he feels when he’s sleeping. If Will was a patient man, he would figure out how to get off the bed without waking his boyfriend, but, unfortunately for Jem, Will and patience aren’t on speaking terms.
“Jem,” he hisses, in that brand of whisper that’s somehow louder than speaking normally, “ Jem , wake up.”
A mostly-asleep mumbling noise is his only answer.
“I will chew my arm off. Like a fox - heh , not gonna say it - in a trap, James, I swear to god . And then you’ll have to clean blood off the sheets while Tessa drives me to A&E. Jem .”
He nudges his boyfriend’s head with the arm that’s actually functional, for good measure, and is rewarded with a groan and, “Bluffing. Lemme go back t’sleep.”
“I am one hundred percent not bluffing, get off .” Jem groans again, but rolls to the side, curled around one of the approximately a thousand overstuffed pillows that somehow keep ending up on their bed. “ Thank you. Can you hand me my glasses?” His glasses case hits him in the chest with more force than is strictly necessary. “You’re a peach,” Will snipes, in his best approximation of Tessa’s clipped accent - Jem laughs, which is what Will was going for, and props himself up on an elbow to steal a kiss, which is an unintended bonus.
“Are you two gonna stay in here all day?” Tessa asks, appearing in the doorway, hair a cloud around her head and wearing an oversized t-shirt and not much else.
“Well,” Jem drawls, “That wasn’t my plan, but if you’d like to come back to bed…”
Will groans and faceplants into a pillow, the frames of his glasses digging into his face. “You would wake up just to make a sex joke.”
“I woke up because you don’t have the upper arm strength to get me off your shoulder, thanks ,” Jem grumbles back, curling tighter around the pillow in his arms.
“C’mon, boys, out of bed,” Tessa says with a lopsided grin, clambering onto the oversized mattress they got shortly after they all started dating to grab one of their hands each. ( Will loves her hands, warm and brown and graceful, the scar on her left palm from a straightening iron, the little stick-and-poke star tattoo she impulsively let her ex-girlfriend put on the side of her wrist, right over the jut of her radius. ) ( He loves her in general, but that’s a given .) Will goes along with the tug on his hand, and kisses her before Jem can just for the little annoyed noise in his ear and the warm brush of their mingled breath on him as he pulls away. “Not that I don’t love the attention, but you both have awful morning breath,” Tessa mumbles, forehead pressed to Jem’s and lips tipped up in a smile.
Will laughs, and Jem huffs at her before dipping in for another kiss. “Yeah, yeah. I’m going to take a shower, if either of you wants to join me so I don’t use up all the hot water I won’t argue,” he says, sliding off the bed and ignoring Tessa and Will’s fond glares at his back.
“That man lives to vex me,” Will says overdramatically, tossing an arm over his eyes and peeking at Tessa’s grin around it.
“You say that as if you aren’t going to take him up on that offer,” Tessa responds easily.
“Well, yeah , but still,” he grumbles, and then slides off the bed himself, still holding her hand.
Disgustingly domestic, the three of them.
It’s nearly noon by the time they’re dressed and ready to do anything, moving lazily around the apartment like the world outside doesn’t matter, just the three of them - or maybe that’s Will’s tendency for dramatics, getting lost in the little things like the chips in Tessa’s nail polish and the half a centimetre of dark roots sneaking under Jem’s hair dye, the little imperfections that make them convincing as actual people, because god knows they seem like something out of a dream most days. Will, as the only one who can cook, is elected to make lunch while Tessa pulls up something on her phone - Jessamine’s latest video, Will realizes as he hears her voice, and he says “If she’s making out with my sister on camera again I won’t be held responsible for my actions.”
“Cecily is a mature adult who can make her own decisions, and they were hardly making out.” Tessa fires back absently.
“Look at you being the voice of reason,” Will sighs, and then points at Church, who they haven’t trained to stay off the counters yet. “Get her. Go on, you are a fierce predator, you can do it.” Church is unimpressed. “Your cat’s fired, Jem.”
Tessa laughs at him, reaches out to stroke the damn furball. “N’aw, don’t listen to him, who’s a good kitty?” Church continues to be unimpressed, and stalks across the breakfast bar to settle on Jem’s lap. Business as usual. Jem snickers at the baleful looks on both of their faces, because he’s an awful boyfriend, and Will flicks warm spaghetti sauce into his damp hair because he's worse and has to defend his title, and then it turns into a bit of a food fight, like they're teenagers in a bad movie, laughing like the world can't touch them even though they know it can and will, but it's been a good week for all three of them and that happens less often than they'd like, so they take advantage where they can.
“I love you,” Jem says easily - Will always marvels at how effortless the words seem for him - as he reaches over and pulls a noodle out of Tessa’s hair. He has sauce on his forehead and a big splotchy tea stain on his shirt, and Tessa has long streaks of confectioner’s sugar on her jeans, and neither of them has ever looked more beautiful.
“I love you too,” Tessa says just as easily, leaning in for a kiss.
“I’d love both of you significantly more if there wasn't coffee on my glasses,” Will says around the lump in his throat - the sort of lump that comes from a piece of poetry that makes your heart race, or standing in an old castle and feeling the weight of centuries on your back. Unexplainable, awed, just a tiny bit terrified that something can move you so much.
“ Please , as if you could love us more ,” Tessa says easily, “Come over here, would you?”
And Will falls into their gravity with all the inevitability of a sunrise.