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It’s late. It’s late and Jakey can’t sleep, so late in fact that it’s actually early, he can actually hear the birds starting to wake up and take flight. He imagines them, the way they cut across the gradient of the sky, their silhouettes breaking up the swimming colours of black into deep blue, like they are personally dragging the sun across the sky simply to piss him off.
This will be the third night he hasn’t been able to sleep. He’ll eventually admit defeat and drag himself to the shower, stumble down the stairs and sit at the island with a cup of tea and try to quell the trembling in his hands until his boys start to stir and the house will come to life again. But that’s hours away yet.
For now, he’s still trying, and failing miserably, to force his brain to shut off and allow him the sweet mercy of a rem cycle.
The first night he marked it up simply to the excitement of the new house, the official Bov House (patent pending). It’s undeniably sick, his room is sick, his bathroom is so fucking sick, the whole house is sick, living with his boys is sick. Just sick all around, really. He loves it, especially seeing his friends everyday, seeing Beano everyday. It’s beyond comprehension. He barely slept that first night, wired and bouncing the walls and running between rooms and exploring his new home.
The second night was a bit different. He’d felt it through the day, the aching in his chest that was originally a little niggling feeling, growing and growing until he had to retire to bed simply so he could press a hand to his sternum and curl into a ball under unfamiliar sheets, on an unfamiliar bed, in an unfamiliar room in an attempt to ease the pain. It knocked him breathless, that night.
He’s discovered that the Gaping Chest Ache (the GCA, he’s aptly been referring to it as) becomes slightly less of a gaping hole during the day, when he’s with his boys - Beano, especially, but he’s refusing the acknowledge the implications of that at the moment. Having people around helps, streaming helps, being out of the house helps, getting so stoned he can’t form an articulate thought helps. But as soon as he’s alone, or the high wears off, then it’s back with a vengeance.
He couldn’t figure it out at first, what it was. Why he couldn’t just enjoy this very exciting new part of his life, why at random moments the GCA would knock him sick and dizzy and sad, why he seemed to be the only one suffering with this when the other boys were glowing and at ease no matter what time of day he found them.
He started noticing a pattern in it. His mum may call, or one of Charlie’s tiktoks would pop up on his for you page, or a tabby cat would mander through the back garden or his dad would send a message in his twitch chat and he’d be hit with a wave of longing so strong it would have him swallowing around a lump in his throat for a good few hours afterwards.
It took a while for him to piece it together, especially since he’d go from on top of the world with his boys, or on stream, to near enough bursting into tears. But then it all came together last night in his head and he’s officially diagnosed himself with Little Bitch Disorder (or LBD, patent pending).
Also known as homesickness.
Which, by the way, is so fucking stupid. Because he’s not even that far away from his family, he can drive home on the weekends and his new home is sick (pun intended), miles above anything he thought he’d ever have on his own. And it’s filled with his favourite people, doing his favourite things and living like kings. Or… like, jesters. And Beano.
Beano. Heinz. Ryan, if he may be so bold.
He’s probably the highlight of this whole thing. The highest highlight, because everything in this house is a highlight, if he’s being honest. Just a ball of sunshine, shedding his light on the entire house. He’s been actively searching him out when things get too dark for him, basking in the warmth of Beano’s glow, letting him pull Jakey into whatever stupid plan he’s cooked up, drag him room from room and annoying the other lads. He’s beautiful, and hilarious, and kind, and sometimes he tugs Jakey into his chest for a playful hug and the GCA goes away completely and it’s blissful and—
Someone is knocking on his door.
Someone is knocking at his door? He glances at the time on his monitor across the room and yep, it’s 4:43 in the morning. Why the fuck is someone knocking at his bedroom door at this ungodly hour, he could be sleeping for all they know.
The door swings open, just as he tilts his head back to look at it and there, bathed in the yellow light of the hallway, stood in his doorway is Beano.
Ah, speak of the handsome devil and he shall appear, apparently. Jakey blinks, maybe he was thinking about him so much he’s created a beautiful hallucination of him. It would make sense, considering the mild sleep deprivation of it all.
“Are you being fucking serious?” Says Hallucination Beano, thick Irish accent slurring the words the way it tends to do when he’s overly tired. Jakey blinks again, this time incredulously. Hallucination Beano is grumpy.
“What?” Jakey gapes, because what.
“Do you have any idea the racket you’re fucking making?” Hallucination Beano grumbles, “what the fuck are you doing in here, practicing for the Olympic gold in gymnastics?”
“What the fuck?” Jakey says, because, again, what the fuck.
“Jake, it sounds like you’re doing backflips on your bed. I can’t fucking sleep because of you rolling around” Hallucination Beano hisses, stepping into the room a little more and, oh, he’s shirtless. Jakey is a pervert who’s hallucinating his best friend shirtless at 4 in the morning.
Jakey, who is suddenly very distracted, just blinks up at the hallucination of Beano, he’s starting to get a crick in his neck from the angle he’s lying in. His mouth is open, he registers vaguely, he might be drooling a little. The lack of sleep is suddenly very apparent.
Shirtless Hallucination Beano’s voice softens, “why are you still up, Jake?”
It takes a few beats for Jakey’s brain to compute that he was asked a question, one that he’s actually required to answer, not Hallucination Beano just being a dick. When he answers his throat is dry, “can’t sleep” he mumbles, bringing a hand up to rub messily at his stinging eyes. Must be the light irritating them, not the softness in the imitation of Beano’s voice.
Hallucination Beano’s face goes impossibly softer and when he speaks next it feels like balm to Jakey’s brain, like gold dripping from his tongue. Jakey wants to lap it up desperately, he knows he would if given the chance. He’s pathetic. “You’ve been a bit off since we moved in, what’s going on, Jake?”
Jakey probably could tell him, Hallucination Beano won’t tell anyone on account of being, y’know, a hallucination but still, the mere suggestion of speaking this out loud is enough to send Jakey sick. Admitting he’s homesick, means admitting that he’s being ungrateful for this incredible opportunity, means he’s less than an hours drive away from his family and he’s still being a baby about it.
Little Bitch Disorder, Jakey thinks mourningly.
Something hot bubbles in his throat and his cheeks burn so he turns his head back towards the window and his monitor, tucking his chin and mouth under the duvet. “Nothing, im alright” he mumbles, squeezing his eyes closed.
Hallucination Beano should be gone now, if Jakey knows anything about hallucinations - which he doesn’t. He can’t hear anything and with his eyes closed he can’t see anything so he feels like it’s safe to assume the ancient rule of If I Ignore It, It Will Go Away applies to hallucinations too.
But you know what they say about assuming.
After a few beats there’s a flurry of motion and soft noise all at once and Jakey’s pulse jumps, he doesn’t think sleep deprivation fuelled hallucinations are supposed to blatantly ignore the ancient rule.
Maybe he’s schizophrenic.
The door clicks closed and the room is bathed in only the soft light of his monitors once again and then footsteps quick across the wood laminate floor and then a heavy body throws itself on to the bed, on to Jakey.
Their moans of pain harmonise, breaking through the quiet of the house like thunder cracking. Hallucination Beano squirms around behind him, pulling the cover back and slipping under like he’s done it a hundred times before. Which he hasn’t, because this is the first time Jakey has hallucinated Beano and Alive Beano has never been in his bed like this.
Oh yeah, never like this. Jakey would remember if he had Alive Beano pressing his shirtless chest up against his back, swinging a leg over his hip and making him his little spoon.
He’s definitely schizophrenic.
“I’m definitely schizophrenic.”
“Fucking— what are you going on about?” Schizophrenic Hallucination Beano lifts his head up from where it had been nuzzling into the back of Jakey’s hair happily. He squints down at him, Jakey blinks back silently. “Go to sleep, you fucking weirdo” Hallucination Beano flops back down and wraps an arm around Jakey’s waist, tugging him tighter into his body and warmth.
And suddenly it’s all a bit too much for Sleep Deprived, Definitely Schizophrenic, Little Bitch Jakey Davies and he makes a broken, panicked sound in the back of his throat, burying his face in his pillow.
“Oh my god” He whines, panicked and muffled, “They’re gonna lock me up— where do they lock schizophrenic people up? Is it the asylum? Beano, is it the asylum? It’s the asylum, isn’t it? That’s why you’re not saying anythin—“ there a small scuffle with the sheets and Jakey lifts his head up slightly from where he was trying to suffocate himself in the pillow.
A large hand claps down on his face, palm covering his nose and mouth and long fingers spreading out, poking him in one of his eyes. He makes a muffled sound of outrage into the clammy skin and Hallucination Beano shushes him gently, “close your eyes” he whispers into the back of Jakey’s head.
Jakey closes his eyes, because what else can he fucking do, but not before he tucks his freezing feet into Hallucination Beano’s calves. He can hear him hiss from the cold and he smirks into the palm hugging his face Alien style.
He blames the stress of Hallucination Beano for the fact he can feel his eyes growing heavy, finally. He’s vaguely aware of the thumb stroking lightly at his temple as he slips into the gentle waters of deep sleep. He doesn’t even notice that the GCA has gone quiet.
When Jakey wakes up it’s because the sun is shining directly into his eyes and he’s sweating his bollocks off. He’s groggy, his head feels like it’s filled with cotton and he’s being restrained by something burning hot and sweaty. When he cracks his eyes open finally, the clock on his monitor says 8:07am. He slept for four hours, which doesn’t seem like a lot but in comparison to the zero he had been getting, it feels like a fucking godsend.
He’s suddenly very aware of the fact his bladder is seconds away from releasing itself all over his beautiful six-seven sheets, he shifts to get up but there’s a heavy weight holding him down by the waist.
Jakey blinks down at the pale arm slung over him, and follows it up to the shoulder, lifting his body as much as he can to glance behind him.
“What the fuck” he chokes. Ah, Hallucination Beano. Hello again.
Hallucination Beano stirs, scrunching his face up like a little kitten and smacking his lips. It takes him a minute to blink himself awake but when he does he looks up at Jakey with those pretty eyes and grins, squinting in the sunlight cutting a beam across his face. “Morning, Jake. You sleep alright?”
Apollo looking fucker.
“Fuck you, Sun God” Jakey hisses over his shoulder, looking admittedly not like a God of any kind. God of ugliness maybe, God of not having a chin, perhaps.
“Maybe we really will have to have you admitted” Beano scans his face with a raised eyebrow, bringing the hand not squeezing around Jakey’s waist to scratch at his stomach with a yawn, flopping his head back onto the pillow.
“You what?” Jakey blinks, “nevermind— why are you in my bed?”
Beano smirks up at him, snickering “you don’t remember me coming in last night?”
Oh, yeah. So, not a hallucination then, apparently.
“Mate, I thought I hallucinated you.” He gapes down at Not Hallucination Beano.
He laughs, bright and beautiful as always, “do you hallucinate me in the middle of the night often?”
Jakey shakes his head solemnly “no, first time” and then he blinks, “well, not first time because you’re real”
“Is that why you were banging on about schizophrenia last night?” Beano snickers, squeezing his waist.
“What are you talking about?” Jakey squints and then his bladder gives a warning throb, “wait, let go, I need a wee wee”
“A fucking what?” Beano laughs as Jakey wiggles out of his hold and vaults across the bed to the folding bathroom doors, whacking his shoulder as he falls in the room.
When he’s blissfully emptied his bladder, splashed his face with some cold water and brushed his teeth he emerges from the bathroom feeling more human than he has in days. Beano has propped himself up against Jakey's pillows and is scrolling his phone.
For a brief second, Jakey can picture a future so clear, so vivid, it makes him sway on his feet. A future where he wakes up like this with Beano in his bed looking beautiful every morning, splayed out across the pillows like a king, shirtless and sun-kissed and flushed with sleep.
“You want a brew, crazy eyes?” Beano asks, glancing up from his phone with a smirk, and Jakey is so in love he might choke on it. All he can do is nod with big eyes. “Alright, come get cozy again and i’ll bring you one, my prince”
Jakey crawls back in bed just as Beano crawls out, he watches as he pads around Jakey’s room like it’s his own, pulling the curtains closed to block out the harsh sun, and fluffing the pillow behind Jakey's head. He winks at Jakey when he closes the door and annoyingly, it makes his cheeks flush red.
Hopefully he’ll sleep again tonight.
—
He doesn’t. And it’s late again. Not as late as last night but still late. He’s tired and aching again, and after a day spent basking in Beano’s warmth and gentle eyes and gentler touch it feels worse, almost. like he’s spent the day so filled with love, that the GCA feels so much more gaping and achy now. Fucking Beano. Fuck that guy.
He squeezes his eyes shut and buries his face into the duvet, rolling onto his side away from the door again, just like last night. Jakey wonders if every night is going to be like this. The days spent incandescently happy, and the nights spent flayed open and sickened.
His thoughts are interrupted when the bed dips behind him and his soul near enough leaves his fucking body. “Please— I'm too young to die!” he squeaks, throwing a hand back in an effort to fight for his life.
A warm, strong hand grabs his wrist before it can collide with whoever has broken in to defile his curvy body. He’s about to start screaming when Beano’s soothing voice cuts through the air with a soft laugh, “will you chill out, you psycho? It’s just me”
“What the fuck are you doing? I thought you were a molester!” Jakey hisses, flopping back into his pillow now he knows his chances of being molested have lowered significantly.
“Oh, I’ll molest you, baby” the hand that was holding his wrist lets go to squeeze his arse.
Nevermind, then.
“What is wrong with you?” Jakey whines into his pillow, doing his very best to ignore the hand groping him.
“Missing this sweet arse all up on me” Beano snickers, giving it one last squeeze before pressing himself up against Jakey chest to back, pulling him in close and sighing happily into his hair.
“Beano, my friend, why are you in my bed?” Jakey whispers, he’s so warm and filled with love again that it’s making his eyes feel heavy, weighed down with how suddenly safe and comfortable he feels.
“Jakey, my love” Beano whispers back, lifting his head to press a little kiss to his temple, “it helped you sleep last night, didn’t it?”
Jakey makes a soft noise in the back of his throat at the soft press of lips, which of course motivates Beano to do it again, and again, and one last time. He hums, sleep tugging at him and making him feel floaty and gone, “maybe” he mumbles sleepily.
Beano shushes him gently, using the hand he’d slipped under Jakey’s head to scratch at his hair, making him go boneless in the warm embrace, “just relax, honey, go to sleep.”
It becomes something of a routine. Every night.
Every night since that first one, Beano will pad across the five steps between their bedroom doors somewhere between the hours of 1 and 3 in the morning and slip underneath the covers and spoon him. Pull him in tight and warm and weigh him down and send him to sleep like some kind of magic aide.
It’s incredible, how good it’s working. Jakey is almost mad about it, how he couldn’t get himself soothed and sleepy but all it takes is the press of Beano’s chest to his back to pull him under. It’s probably a bit unhealthy, if he’s being honest with himself, that there’s a chance he might really need Beano for this and the likelihood of him sticking around forever to soothe Jakey to sleep like he’s a colicky baby is slim to fucking none.
It’s coming up on about two weeks of this now, and Jakey is determined to see a night on his own through. To prove he doesn’t need Beano, that he can fucking sleep without him, that Little Bitch Disorder and the GCA will not beat him down - more than they already have. He’s chosen this night specifically because Beano is out for the night, he’d had to go down to Leeds for something and chose to stay with a friend instead of fucking around with Uber at silly o’clock in the morning.
Which is how Jakey is in the situation he currently is in, curled up in a ball buried under his blankets and pillows, on the edge of tears using shaking fingers to pull up Beano’s contact.
He doesn’t know why he was so stupid to think he could do this alone, after weeks of seeing hide no hair of the GCA its back tonight with a vengeance, choking the air out of his lungs and making breathless with the sick feeling pulse through his chest in waves. Beano stopped him before he left earlier in the day, squeezing his waist in the front hall, lowering his head and catching Jakey’s dancing eyes, told him that he would be back late tonight but he will be back. He’d just waved him off, rolled his eyes and told him not to worry, that he’d be fine without Beano sweating all over him for one night.
He knew, even at that point, that he was lying and so did Beano if the way he stubbornly held eye contact with Jakey for a beat longer before sighing heavily and nodding meant anything.
The second the door had closed behind him, the GCA had pierced through his chest like a blade. He’d just swallowed down the lump in his throat and gone upstairs to start his stream.
The phone only rings twice and it makes Jakey jump when Beano’s sleepy voice crackles through the speakers.”Jake, are you alright?”
The softness makes something in Jakey’s chest crack and he sobs, dry and tired into the phone. Beano coos down the line “aw, Jake, you’re alright, don’t cry” he hums, “can’t sleep?”
Jakey sniffles, biting his lip in an attempt to stop the flow of tears “m’sorry, did I wake you up?”
“No, no, don’t worry” there's a pause, Beano hesitating before, “I couldn’t sleep either”
“Oh” Jake sniffles, messily wiping at his streaming eyes with a rough hand.
“Yeah, you’re infecting me,” Beano laughs quietly. There’s a rustle of fabric for a moment, and when he speaks next, he sounds a little distracted, it makes Jakey frown. “Close your pretty eyes, I’ll stay on the line with you, okay?”
He wants to fight; He wants to ask what’s so important that it’s distracting him from his very important job of being Jakey’s sleep aide. The sheets rustle again on the other end and all of a sudden he can picture someone there with Heinz, in bed with him. In bed with Jakey’s magical, beautiful boy. Some faceless but likely very beautiful man or woman is getting to lie in Jakey’s place, warm and safe in Beano’s arms.
At any other time, the mental image alone is enough to send him into a rage so hot and dizzying he’ll have to go start a fight with Heinz over nothing or lie down in a dark room. Whatever is more convenient for him at the time. But now, with the GCA subsiding and the weight of sleep pulling him under, the rhythm of Beano’s breathing lulls him into complacency. He scrubs at his eyes again and buries his face in the pillow and lets it soothe him once again.
It’s only a few hours later that he wakes again, blearily, to the familiar sensation of his mattress dipping behind him. A quick glance at his monitor across the room tells him two hours, to be exact. He makes a questioning noise in the back of his throat, toeing the line of flat out and awake and much too comfortable to lift his head to check who’s breaking in.
He doesn’t have to wonder for long, Beano flopping down behind him, swinging an arm around his waist in a practiced motion and pulling him close, burying his nose in the back of Jakey’s hair with a tired moan.
“What’re y’doing back?” Jakey mumbles sleepily into his pillow, going boneless in the embrace.
“W’missing you” Beano whispers into the back of his head, “can’t sleep without y’now” the words come out a slurred stream.
“S’rry” Jakey mumbles again, already half way back asleep.
“S’alright, don’t mind” Beano hums, squeezing at his waist, “just means we’ve got t’keep sleeping together”
Jakey hums happily and shuffles back impossibly further into Beano, curling up tighter now he’s back where he’s supposed to be. “What a shame”
He almost falls back into dreamless sleep to the sound of Beano’s hushed, muffled giggling but a sudden thought pierces through the sleepy haze.
“Who were y’with t’night?” he asks into the pillow.
“Hm?” Beano hums into his hair.
“When I called, who was in bed with you?”
There’s silence for a beat, the only sound in the room, the whirring of Jakey’s PC and their sleepy breathing. Jakey squeezes his eyes closed, bracing himself.
“There was no one” Beano whispers, suddenly sounding very awake “You’re the only one I’m getting in bed with, Jake”
Jakey rolls those words over in my mind over and over again. He’s quiet long enough to hear Beano sigh heavily and feel him tuck his nose into the skin of the back of his neck. He chews on his lip, eyelids drooping, unable to parse through the feelings those words inspire in him when he’s this tired. “Good” he says finally, closing his eyes.
He feels Beano press his lips to the back of his neck as he falls back asleep.
It’s like the floodgates have been opened after that night, there’s no longer much shame left in it for Jakey now he knows Beano needs it like he does. Beano doesn’t even bother to sneak in after the other lads have retired to their rooms now, just skips up the stairs behind Jakey with a hand on his arse and a sly little smile on his face.
He knows they’ve started to notice something is going on. A lot of their behaviour can be chalked up pretty easy to committing to the bit but there’s only so much he can explain away when Ginge literally walks in on them one morning in bed.
It’s happening more and more, actually. There was Ginge first - He’d swung the door of Jakey’s room yelling something about him being a slacker despite the fact it was just gone 8 in the morning and he knew for a fact Tays and Chaz were still knocked out upstairs. Got the shock of his life when both Jakey and Beano popped their heads up from out of the mess of pillows. It still makes Jakey laugh, the face he made, the way he didn’t say anything, just turned around and walked back out the door in silence.
They’d had a good giggle about it that morning, wrapped up in each other and warmed by the sun beams from the window.
Tays was next and probably the most incriminating because he found them after Jakey had a rough day. It wasn’t Little Bitch Disorder bad this time, no, someone in his chat had said something that hit a little too close to home, one too many fat jokes, and then everyone in his chat had joined in. It was silly, caught him on a day he was feeling more sensitive than usual and knocked him for six.
Instead of the usual spooning that night, Beano had gathered him up in his arms so they were face to face, had spent an hour describing all the ways he thought Jakey’s thighs were sexy and groping at different body parts until Jakey was too flustered to keep telling him to fuck off, and then had moved on to his new Jakey Soothing Technique. He’d gather Jakey up close, so close they were sharing the same air and he’d drag the tip of his nose up and down the bridge of Jakey’s, it would send a shiver down his spine, send tingles into his fingertips and make him go completely brainless.
That's how Tays found them, with Jakey half asleep and flushed pink and Heinz uncharacteristically silent and focused and carefully tracing the curve of Jakey's nose with the tip of his own. In hindsight, from the angle Tays was standing, it probably did look like they were snogging, but frankly there was no need for him to scream so loud and slam the door so hard. And there was even less need for him to run down the stairs yelling about them “lipsing”. Twat.
Chazza. What Chazza walked in on was bad, Jakey will admit that, but it wasn’t even his fault. Getting flashed by Beano at 7 in the morning isn’t exactly Jakey’s idea of a good time either (it is).
They had an early morning, having to be on a shoot at 9, and Beano had decided it would be easier to shower in Jakey’s bathroom rather than walk the ten feet to his own but Jakey wasn’t complaining. He’d rolled out of bed, hopped downstairs to make Jakey a brew and then started shedding his clothes - stood at the foot of the bed in front of the bathroom doors, backlit by the cool toned lighting flooding in from the open doors. It had been a joke, Jakey is sure of this, he’d been humming that song from Magic Mike and pretending to give Jakey a striptease, thumbs hooked in the waistband of his sweats and pretending to pull them down.
It might actually be Chazza’s fault, now Jakey is thinking about it, he’d near enough twatted the door off its hinges with how hard he’d kicked it open, the sound of it swinging and smacking into the wall ricocheted around the room like a fucking gunshot and had shocked all three of them. Beano the most, evidently by the way he’d jumped a foot in the air and screamed, in his panic, he’d ended up letting go of the waistband of his sweats and they’d fallen down his legs easily.
Beano wasn’t wearing any underwear. Beano stood there with his pants around his ankles and his penis displayed to all who had eyes to see. Beano at the foot of Jakey’s bed with his cock out whilst Jakey was propped up against the headboard sipping on his tea flushed pink with sleep and Beano’s little show.
That one was bad, they didn’t hear the end of it from any of the boys. Didn’t stop Beano from doing it again the next morning, without the full frontal nudity this time, (un)fortunately.
He doesn’t even want to get into what Corey has seen. Poor bloke.
Jakey knows they want to know what the fuck is going on, Ginge has tried to pull him aside no less than 9 times in the last week to ask and Chazza keeps making sly comments about it all and he know Tays has spoken to Beano about it but he doesn’t know what was said. If he did, this would all be much easier because how is he supposed to tell them what the fuck is going on when he himself doesn’t know what the fuck is going on.
He’s too scared to bring it up in case it shatters his little piece of heaven. He’s just realising how much is on the line here. If they ever fall out, they could bring this entire thing down with them - Bov Boys, their own careers, friendships with the other lads.
He’s not sure it’s worth the risk. He’s not sure if Heinz will think he’s worth the risk.
It all comes to a head about a week later. Beano has been in Ireland for three days, seeing his family, and Jakey has slept about 3 hours out of the 36 and he’s starting to smell colours.
The good thing is that Beano will be home very soon, caught the earliest flight possible, and should be pulling up the house any minute. It's only just gone six, the house is still asleep and Jakey is sitting on the cold, concrete steps of the porch, light bathing him in soft gold. The freezing morning air isn’t doing much for how tired he is but the GCA is already starting to ease with the mere thought of Beano coming back home to him.
He pulls the sleeves of Beano’s jumper further down his wrists and over his hands to fight off the chill. He’s shivering badly, bare feet stinging from the cold of the stone step, but he can’t stand to lie in that bed any longer without his boy.
Just as he’s about to start praying to whatever deity prevents hypothermia, the gate buzzes open and a tall figure slips through them carrying a large duffle bag over one shoulder. He’d been so lost in thought he hadn’t even heard the Uber pull up on their street.
Jakey sits frozen with bated breath as his boy meanders up the gravel drive wearily, head down and shoulders slouched like he can barely be bothered to hold himself up. His heart clenches in his chest.
Heinz lifts his head just as he meets the widest part of the drive, mere feet from the stairs Jakey is perched on, and finally notices him sitting there. He stops dead.
There’s a beat of silence and then Beano’s face lights up, a smile pulling at his lips. “Couldn’t sleep?” he grins, raising an eyebrow. Cheeky fucker.
Jakey chokes out a laugh, launching himself up off the steps, across the sharp gravel and into Beano - trusting him to catch him. Which he does, of course, even if he stumbles back a few steps with a bright, beautiful laugh. Hands grip his thighs and heave him up, wrapping them around Beano's waist; His arms wrap around Beano’s neck tightly, and he presses his face into the warm skin of his boys neck with a happy hum.
“Missed me, did you?” Beano laughs, tilting his head ever so slightly so he can brush a kiss to Jakey’s hair.
“Not at all” Jakey mumbles, rubbing the cold skin of his nose Beano’s neck, giggling when he hisses at the shock. He lifts his head and uses one hand to messily brush Beano’s fringe back off his forehead and scans his face, taking in his bright but tired eyes, the bags underneath them, the pale tint to his skin. He frowns, “you look tired.”
Beano’s eyes soften and he holds eye contact for a beat, “so do you,” he hums, scanning Jakey’s face right back, “told you I can’t sleep without you now.”
The rush of emotion that floods through Jakey’s body brings tears to his eyes, they balance on his waterline dangerously, he exhales shakily. “Oh” he breathes.
Beano blinks, concern furrowing his brow, “what is it?”
“I just…” He wets his lips, sighing, “I just didn’t notice when I stopped being homesick for a place and started being homesick for you.”
Something in Beano’s expression cracks, raw and open, his eyes swimming with adoration. He laughs wetly, "I'm going to kiss you now, yeah?” he smiles.
Jakey can only nod dumbly, a single tear freeing itself from his eye and rolling over his pink flushed cheek. “Yes, please”
And he does, slipping one arm under his arse to support him and sliding the other snug around Jakey’s waist, leaning in and connecting their lips softly.
Jakey makes a broken sound in the back of his throat, tightening his arms around Beano’s neck and kissing his harder, deeper. Fireworks explode behind his eyes, every nerve in his body lighting up, every hair stands on end. Fairytale ass kiss, of fucking course.
They stay like that for what feels like hours, kissing softly, biting at each other's lips, sliding their tongues together until Beano pulls away to yawn into Jakey’s face.
“Oh— lovely, thank you for that, very romantic” Jakey scoffs, squeezing at Beano’s waist with his thighs so he’ll let him down. He hisses when his bare feet meet sharp, cold gravel.
“Oi, i’ve already got you in my bed, don’t need to romance you” Beano grins slyly, bringing a hand down to squeeze at Jakey’s arse and dripping to press a sweet kiss to his lips.
“Fuck off, i’m a wine and dine kind of boy” Jakey grumbles, “I don’t put out on the first date.”
“Oh, you’ll be putting something out, alright” Beano wiggles his eyebrows, patting Jakey’s arse again but whatever bit he was going for is broken when he yawns again.
“Okay, bedtime. Come on, come to bed” Jakey rolls his eyes, stepping out of the embrace and pulling him toward the door.
“Yeah, I'm coming to bed” Beano smiles.
When they emerge hours later and stumble downstairs, the sun is high in the sky. It’s late, it’s late in the day and Jakey is well rested and flushed with sleep and love and his lips are pink and kiss-bitten and he doesn’t think he’s ever been happier in his life.
They all but fall into the living room together, in search for the other lads. When they walk in the room erupts in loud cheering, clapping and wolf-whistles; the lads stand there in the middle of the room with shit-eating grins on their faces.
It takes Jakey’s sleepy mind a moment to place what the fuck is happening but when he clocks it he can only groan and bury his head in Beano’s shoulder as the other boy whoops in celebration.
There, on the living room TV, is the CCTV footage from 6 o’clock this morning, frozen on the frame of him and Beano kissing.
Fucking typical.