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“Please tell me you paid the bill.”
After gently putting down a bag full of groceries, Marco immediately went for the large heater of the freezing living room. He could not believe this. They had talked about this, it was at least the second time. When his already cold fingers met with the icy surface of the dead heater, he spun around to glare at his flatmate.
“Jean. Did you pay the bill?”, he calmly asked, but no heavy sigh could hide how pissed he was.
Marco watched Jean avoiding to meet his stare; his flatmate lowered his head as he put his own bag of groceries down to the floor, his other hand reaching for the nape of his neck in embarrassment. Marco could hear the wheels turning in his head as he looked for an escape.
“Jean. Are you serious?”, Marco insisted firmly. “You said you would do it. After last year – ”
“I’m sorry, I completely forgot,” Jean blurted. “I’ll do it tonight.”
Golden eyes finally met black ones and Marco huffed, going back to their flat’s entrance. What a shitty week, he admitted to himself while untying his shoes, trying to ignore the orange cat rubbing against his legs. All these deadlines, then his boss asking his to cover for his coworker’s failures and now this. Why Jean was still responsible for some bills was beyond him. This grown-up man could not be praised for his reliability, no matter how hard Marco believed he would grow of it soon.
But living with Jean was signing up for the whole package; Marco gladly let Jean be irritating and annoying and thirty shades of exasperating at times in exchange for his talent in the kitchen.
Well, gladly was a strong word. He let it slide. He had let it slide for three years already. It became habit, a mark of their past, present and future, since the day Marco decided he could get used to it.
Jean had stuffed their fridge – which was way too small for his culinary ambitions, thrown his coat on a nearby chair and started warming up some oil in silence. He was going to try and make up for his forgetfulness, yet Marco already couldn’t keep scowling at him. Jean also had it rough after all. Winters had always been ruthless. The flat would be cold for a time but they could power through it together.
Marco leaned against the door frame. He had never quite gotten used to the sight. All Jean’s angles, the blades in his fingers and the edges over his cheeks made him look like the carefully chosen work of a visionary, time-wasting artist drunk with his clay, only to be sent to a worn kitchen counter where he would soften into this moving Bernini.
Gratefulness took Marco by the chest.
He could tell Jean knew he was being observed. Neither of them did anything about it.
“You’re only getting better at this.”
“I know right?”, Jean boasted, shamelessly basking in the compliment. “I’m too good. Way too good.”
Marco hummed enthusiastically around a mouthful of pesto chicken – obviously prepared with love and care. Cooking was one of these things, one of his things, Jean knew would always cheer Marco up.
Jean almost reminded him not to choke on it, not on that; he was cut off by a ball of orange fur jumping directly onto their small kitchen table. Swift as a trained thief, the cat robbed a large piece of chicken and dropped it on the floor.
“Pepperoni!” Jean cried as he bolted out of his chair to chase the thug, personally offended by the pet’s lack of respect. The cat avoided Jean’s hand, jumped down to the ground and picked up his prize before darting out of the living room.
Marco laughed.
“Do something! He’s going to put pesto everywhere!”, Jean implored, betrayed. He fumbled for a second to push his chair out of the way but gave up when Pepperoni disappeared through the cat door, thus sealing the fate of this delicious piece of chicken.
“You should let him taste your talent, Jean”, Marco said softly, responding to the despair Jean knew was visible all over his face. He put his fork down in his empty plate. “Don't be mad, it’s just one piece.”
Jean sighed and sat back down, shoulders low. It was only chicken, it shouldn’t have any impact on him. Actually, on any other day it would have made him chuckle, he would have thrown another piece at the cat or played around with him. But tonight? Tonight wasn’t that kind of night. With all the love he had for Pepperoni, this dirty alley kitten growing into a fiery beast, his greedy backstabbing was yet another drop in the gigantic vase of Things Jean Would Rather Not Have To Think About.
“I know. I’m just – ”
“Tired.”
Jean ran a hand through his hair and looked for Marco’s eyes. From this angle, with the weak lighting of the kitchen, the familiarity of Marco’s understanding smile made the casual support of a friend bloom into fond intimacy. Over the years, Marco had kept his way of turning gloomy evenings into cozy nights; just as naturally, he would suck the temperature out of the room when Jean overstepped a boundary.
“Yeah.”
And Jean had been thinking about it more and more, as time passed. Not too much at first. But more. Then most often. He had become sensitive to the distance between them; even though it was minimal, as they had been living together for years already, this emotional puddle felt like a titanic chasm, an uncharted abyss luring the sailor he was into uncertain depths.
He liked it.
“Well, now that the heater is down, we should get the extra blankets out of the closet,” Marco mumbled, stretching his arms over his head without breaking eye contact; he made something crack in his neck, almost closed his eyes before saying something again. His tongue slipped between his lips to articulate a word, his head comfortably fell to the side, his collarbones ever so slightly moved along with his deep breathing.
Jean wasn’t listening.
Jean knew Marco had noticed his lack of attention; the temperature did not shift.
Marco bit his bottom lip and Jean begged the abyss between them to call his name.
“It should be back tomorrow. Look, it’s written here.”
Marco shifted under the heavy blanket they had spread over the couch and scooted closer to Jean to look at his flatmate’s screen. Jean felt the couch dip by his side with Marco’s weight; somehow the feeling crept all the way up from his thigh to his jaw and settled there in a curious, almost itchy temptation. He could taste it on the back of his tongue, this rush of desire, this craving for the other bank of the river. If he focused, his skin could pick up the warmth of Marco’s breath from there. After half a second of internal turmoil, Jean concluded he shouldn’t focus.
It wasn’t the first time. It wouldn’t be the last. It had to stop.
But he liked it.
“Nice”, Marco smiled. “Thank you for taking care of it.”
Jean stayed silent, knowing perfectly well he couldn’t comment on his own fuck up. Don’t focus. If he turned his face to the left he would meet Marco’s warm, kind gaze; he could feel it already. Marco was staring.
“I’ll go get more layers”, Marco abruptly said before pushing the blanket away from him and leaving the couch to go towards his room. Jean watched him go. The weight was gone, the warmth left the back of his throat and quietly vanished without making any more waves. Jean missed it immediately.
The silence drowned the living room in ice. Even Pepperoni’s soft purring, usually so cozy and homey, couldn’t compensate for a dead heater and a kissable flatmate staying away by more than an arm’s length.
Marco came back quickly, wearing a dark blue sweater Jean remembered finding on the floor of the corridor on an early Saturday morning about a year ago. That day, Marco had made pancakes for the first time; now that he was thinking about it, Jean had found these pancakes bitter and dry, not because of Marco’s average skills but most likely because he would have preferred not to share them with a third person. The abyss was already whistling her eerie tune to his ears at the time and Jean had wished for deafness.
“Here, you can have this one”, Marco offered, throwing a thick woolen vest onto Jean’s lap before sitting next to him.
“Nice, thank you”, Jean answered simply, bending in uncomfortable ways to put the vest on. “It’ll work better than using Pepperoni as my heater.”
Marco chuckled; Jean could have sworn the air around him radiated for an instant.
“Let me have him.”
Slowly, Marco grabbed Pepperoni and softly lifted him up. Shushing the cat when he weakly mewled in protest, he brought him to his lap and started stroking his fur until he seemingly fell back asleep. Marco adjusted his position on the couch to accommodate for the pet; his knee first came to touch Jean’s but quickly, most of his thigh covered Jean’s leg. Contented, Marco stopped moving; his body heat quickly spread against Jean and made the blanket feel inadequate. It wasn’t the first time – by now, most things had happened at least once – but tonight, this casual contact felt like another drop in that vase of Things Jean Would Rather Not Have To Think About.
Marco let his back fall against Jean’s side and comfortably slouched into his flatmate’s personal space. Jean hummed in satisfaction without thinking about it; Marco hummed back by habit. A cozy silence settled naturally, barely perturbed by Pepperoni’s gentle purring. It wasn’t cold anymore.
Jean really liked it.
Marco rubbed Pepperoni’s head and Jean felt the abyss tug at his collar, knead his heart with her dusty hand. Fall, he could almost hear. Fall to me, fall again. She promised, releasing her grip on his beating heart, it’s not cold down here, and her lullaby sank into his chest. So Jean fell, let out a sigh as he watched Marco choose which part of the cat he would massage next, then fell again, and again, until vertigo swallowed him whole and he couldn’t tell if there had been one minute in his life he had not loved Marco Bodt.
Relief washed over him; the abyss echoed, suspended in time, away from what the eyes see. Jean inhaled deeply and Marco's weight over him barely resisted the rise of his chest.
“Today was so tiring.”
Jean acquiesced, with all the energy he had – which truly was not much.
“I know. Maybe you should go to sleep”, he managed to blurt. Marco gently shook his head in answer, his hair rubbing against Jean’s neck and chin. Jean repressed the need to kiss all of it.
“I’m good here”, Marco confessed in that low voice of his. He kept that tone for late nights and heartfelt discussions and Jean always looked for the next opportunity to hear it. It sounded like safety.
“Are you still cold?” he asked.
Once again, Marco shook his head; he pressed a little bit harder against Jean, as if trying to sink into his chest. Jean wanted to sing.
“I’m almost too hot now actually”, Marco admitted with a wide smile. His tiredness still showed through.
Jean stretched his arms around Marco’s chest, enveloping him while trying to keep his cool. Even though it broke his heart, he poked Pepperoni’s belly until the cat woke up and reluctantly left the couch. Karma was probably going to come back at him at some point but Jean needed him gone. Hugging Marco from behind, he breathed out and gave himself a break for once.
The abyss had vanished. Jean liked it better than anything else.
“Jean.”
“Yes?”
“What are you doing?”, Marco asked, slightly amused.
“I’m thinking”, Jean answered honestly. He was. He truly was. Not about much, but he was thinking. He definitely was.
“About what?”
“About kissing you,” Jean conceded without missing a beat.
Marco paused for an instant, immobile in every way. Jean could feel something vibrating in his chest – maybe it was Marco trying not to laugh against him, maybe he was just having a funny heart attack. The only thing he could focus on was the soft trumpet playing somewhere in his brain; it sounded like a distant underwater performance. It was nice, even though Jean had no idea how it got in his mind in the first place.
“And?”, Marco insisted after a few seconds.
Nature had never quite made him deaf, but in this instant, Jean surely became mute. Never had his exhausted brain thought about getting this far. So a visibly impatient Marco wiggled out of his hug and turned around.
“And?”, he repeated, black eyes locked into golden ones. Jean improvised.
“If I get to kiss you, I’ll never forget to pay a bill again”, he tried.
Time paused in its flight as Marco’s broken laugh chased the winter away. Jean stared and promised himself to never forget the sight of his friend’s soft lines curving up just for him. Then he stared some more.
“Gladly”, Marco accepted. Cautiously, without leaving Jean’s eyes with his own, he leant forward. Jean swallowed the last centimeters separating their lips with an audible gasp and brought Marco back down onto the couch with him. Marco smiled in their kiss, trying to keep himself from completely falling on top of Jean, but his flatmate did not let him have any of it. Jean tilted his head and grabbed Marco’s neck, guiding him in the dim lighting until wet lips met again, and again, and again amongst giggles. Marco's low voice materialized within the light, within the air itself, floated all around as safety enveloped them, toasty, grateful.
For lack of a more appropriate place to go, Pepperoni crashed on Jean’s bed. He slept over the covers, undisturbed, until late morning.