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Oh, thinks Jelena the moment she lays eyes on Justus Jonas’ scowling face. They share a heart.
She clings to her laptop, the tire of her chair and the softness of Bob’s smile like they’re a fucking lifeline. He’s so sweet, too, stumbles over his words and flushes almost as deep as his voice when she looks at him through her lashes and feels her own cheeks grow hot. He sends heart emojis and responds to every text, he giggles with her and shuffles his feet, he takes the tiniest bites of food he can possibly get away with, and she’d thought-
Silly, maybe.
The phone is never silenced, and every story he tells is haunted by the shape of them; Peter, who is tall and broad and pretty, long runner’s legs and a smile that digs into the core of her - and Justus, who turns his nose up at her, and folds his mouth into something ugly and oozing, nevermind the way the sun makes his hair glow and his eyes shine.
He would be pretty, too, she thinks, suddenly, before she can help it. If he didn’t look at her like that.
Bob never shuts up about them. Just could have come up with that, he says, eyes crinkling at the corners, his mouth pulled into the fondest of lines. Peter would skate with you and maybe even keep up, he says, Adam’s apple jumping, nose scrunching. Every time, she laughs with him. They’re important to him, she’d thought. He’s known them so long.
But even with Bob’s soft gaze on her, she can track the breath they share by the way their shoulders move. Peter drops into a chair - with Bob’s smile, with Bob’s fond eyes, but the way he settles into it is a thing she cannot imagine in the lines of Bob’s dear body.
He isn’t fluid like that. He doesn’t stretch quite enough for so seamless a movement, and his throat flutters too much. Bob’s grace is in his tongue, flashing silver behind his teeth, in the shine of his eyes and the pout of his lips.
Peter wets his.
Justus crosses his arms.
Jelena crowds herself around her laptop.
Bob stays where he is, next to her, looking at her with those eyes. With that mouth. His arm is almost pressed against the backrest of her chair.
His hand twitches.
Justus’ eyes darken.
“You could have told me you were involving someone external”, he says - to Bob - and stays where he is, looking down his nose at her.
Some people, she thinks as she moves to pack away her laptop, could do with a slap in the face. Maybe her handprint would stay, if she put enough force into it, tint his cheek as dark as she knows Bob can flush if she looks at him for too long. Maybe it would bruise, along the path of her knuckles or the soft swell of his cheekbones.
Maybe he would clench his fucking teeth and bite his tongue. Spit a little blood.
Bob puts his hand on her arm.
She looks up her nose at Justus Jonas, and smiles.