Chapter Text
Will stared at Jem like he’d just told him the world was flat but he was already dozing off. He was heavy and close and had wrapped one of those surprisingly strong arms around Will’s waist. Will lay on his back and stared at the ceiling and let the words play through his mind over and over and over. Muttered and so soft they were almost a whisper but they had been clear.
“I love you,” he had said.
Will couldn’t remember how to breathe so he just matched his breaths to Jem’s and tried to calm his heart rate. Things said during sex did not count. Will knew that. It was one of those rules of hook-ups. If you believed the things that people said during sex, your heart got broken, always.
Jem had been clear. Sober and wide awake, he had made it all very clear. He wasn’t looking for love or even a relationship, they weren’t even quite friends with benefits because they rarely saw each other outside of this. Nights where they spoke in whispers and held onto each other like lovers but always woke up alone.
Will had started it. He had gone up to the uncomfortable looking guy in the bar because he had been beautiful and lonely. Near white hair, dark eyes, thin and tall. Beautiful. And either deeply closeted or an orphan with no friends. Will had been sure of the first until they had met at a coffee shop and Jem had kissed him like it was as easy as breathing. The idea of him truly being as lonely as he looked broke Will’s heart.
The relationship was all text messages and meet-ups and kissing in dark corners and never anything personal. Jem didn’t talk about his family or his friends. Sometimes he dropped details that Will gathered up like they were pearls. He played the violin. He didn’t like poetry. He was a fan of the kind of strange art film that didn’t quite make sense and weren’t necessarily in English. He had seen every episode of Monty Python. He spoke more than one language but hadn’t said what.
Then that night, Jem had shown up at his door without so much as a text. Eyes intense and expression a little bit wild and when Will had let him in, rather than take him to bed or sit at the little dining room table in Will’s tiny kitchen, he had wrapped his arms around Will and held on for a long time. Will had been startled by it but had held him just as tightly. Had put his arms around Jem’s back, ran his fingers through that white gray hair and waited until Jem’s heart rate had gone back to normal. They’d made it to bed and then this.
Nothing said during sex counted, Will reminded himself but he still wrapped the words around himself like they were a lifeline.
“I love you,” Will whispered into the silent room.
[feel free to stop here if you want to imagine that this is fluffy and cute or you can continue on for heart ache and pain]
In the morning he was still there. Awake and there. He lay with his head on Will’s shoulder and it was the patterns he traced with his fingers that woke Will. They had been sharing a bed for months, sometimes multiple times a week but this was the most intimate moment that Will had ever woken up to in his life. He stared at the top of Jem’s head as his fingers traced higher and ran along the ridge of Will’s collarbone before traveling back down.
Will swallowed and very tentatively put his hand on Jem’s back, just between his shoulder blades. Will felt the smile against his chest as Jem’s cheek pulled up and it made him bolder. So warm and still tracing patterns that left trails down Will’s skin. Will ran his fingers through the soft hair at the very nape of his neck and he cuddled a little closer.
“I won’t be back,” Jem whispered.
“What?” Will’s voice came out louder and harsher than he wanted. The moment wobbled by didn’t break.
“I’m being relocated,” Jem said.
“For work?” Will asked. He tried to make it a joke though Jem’s voice hadn’t been silly, “You can give me a new number. We can be just friends until the next time you’re in town.”
“When I was twelve, some older kids invited me to hang out with them. I thought I was so cool. By the end of that year, they had me running errands for one of the nastier gangs. Not here, this was up north. I was also completely addicted. I didn’t even know what it was until it was too late,” his voice was soft and far away and Will’s hand was still stroking through his hair as he stared down in horror.
“Two years later, my mother tried to get my out. They told me if I left I would regret it but I wanted it to be over so badly I think I didn’t really care if they found and killed me. If free wasn’t an option then maybe dead wouldn’t be so bad,” Jem told him and the story tapered off.
“What happened?” Will asked.
“They didn’t kill me,” Jem said and the words were empty and dispassionate as though he were talking about math problems or car repairs, “The police actually arrested me first. The junkie son must have done it, killed her for drug money. I was cleared and I agreed to testify. It’s been three years while they build the case. Not just the murder, it’s a giant drug case, it will be in the news whether or not we win. But it starts next month. I’m being put under more intensive protection, I think they called it but it won’t be here.”
“My god, James,” Will said, “I am so sorry.”
“My name isn’t James,” he said.
“I don’t care,” Will said. He twisted and slid down in the bed so that he could look Jem in the eye. Words failed and so he leaned in and kissed him. They had kissed but it had never felt like this. They held on. Jem holding as tightly as Will did.
“You can’t come back?” Will said.
“No, I’ll be a target even after it’s all over. Win or lose, I will always be a target. It’s a price I am willing to pay for this. I just wanted to say goodbye, you’re the thing I’ll miss most. I thought it would be easier to disappear, my protection team is probably pissing themselves. I was supposed to be in the van at 10am today,” Jem said.
“It’s only 8,” Will said.
“But I don’t want to leave yet, they’ll wait for me,” Jem said and he dropped his face down against Will’s shoulder and pulled him in tighter.
“I make good pancakes,” Will said and got a laugh for that. They didn’t get up yet. They stayed twisted around each other and Will listened to stories about Jem’s mother and his childhood and traded for stories about his sisters and his job. After 10, after his van to some new secret life should have left, they made their way into the kitchen.
They made pancakes and Jem kept touching him in the kitchen. Shoulder to shoulder as they watched the bubbles in the pan like they held answers. Whenever Will passed by, Jem pressed a kiss to whatever skin he could reach. An entire pan of pancakes burned when he caught Will’s neck and Will fell still while he kissed a line up his throat.
“Jian,” Jem said and Will looked up at him, “I care. You said you didn’t but I do. There is no one left alive who cared about me and called me by that name. Jian Ming. My mother signed me up for school as David but I never liked that. I like James better than David but my name is Ke Jian Ming.”
“Ke Jian Ming,” Will repeated and got a very sad smile for it, “And I do, care about you, I do.”
“In another life, William, maybe we’ll find each other again,” Jem said.
Breakfast and another two hours of whispered conversation and other things in bed and Jem finally turned his phone back on and called the number that had left four messages. They came to get him, to pick him up from Will’s door in a nondescript minivan and there was a lot of glaring from some very intimidating looking cops. Jem ignored them all and pressed one last kiss to Will’s mouth.
“Good bye,” Jem said.
“I love you, Jian,” Will said.
He didn’t say it back. He got in the car and Will stared after it until it was out of view. He went back inside and lay down in the bed that still smelled a little like Jem.
Three days later a tourist stop postcard showed up in his mailbox. He pulled it out, expecting something chintzy from one of his sisters. Instead it was unsigned and had no return address. It was from the next town north.
“I love you.”