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vocesmente2011-10-10 09:02 pm
themistoklis) wrote in vocesmente2011-10-10 09:02 pm
It's Time to Talk (Part Five)
Title: It's Time to Talk
Fandom: Fake News, Strangers with Candy RPF, Misc. Comics RPF
Summary: The last year of high school always means talking about the future. Even when some people still have another year left after this.
Character/Pairing: Jon/Stephen, Amy/Paul, Jimmy, Denis, Janeane
Rating: PG, some cursing
Length: ~3,500 words (this part), ~24,500 words (total)
Disclaimer: All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for-profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libelous, defamatory, or in any way factual.
Notes: Flashbacks are in italics. "Stevie" (in the fic) is the name Stephen went by as a little kid. Also, several characters in this story are asexual. Hallelujah It's Raining Labels, this Psychology Today article, this Lexicon, and this definition of queerplatonic may be useful if you want to look into asexuality and related concepts.
Thanks: Thanks topoliticette and paperscribe for in-depth beta services and everyone who commented on the first few thousand words of this story and told me to keep going with it. Thanks to aybara_max for the wonderful art.
The first time they kiss, really kiss, not Stephen pecking him on the cheek and then running away on the playground, Jon ends up twisting Stephen's shirt in his hands like he's afraid Stephen is going to slip away. It just makes Stephen laugh into Jon's mouth and pull him closer.
Nobody ever asks him if he thinks Stephen was serious, when they were kids, and Stephen used to make him play 'wedding.' No one ever asks him if Stephen ever talks about playing like that.
He doesn't, by the way. Stephen.
Since his mom thought it was so cute, Jon still has a lot of photos from the wedding game. Sometimes he looks at them and wonders whether Stephen remembers the white dress that used to swap between them.
But mostly the photo box stays on his shelf. Jon doesn't know if he should ask Stephen about the games, or the dress.
---
"So, um. What do you … what do you want to ask me about?" Jon asks, untying his laces. He pushes his shoes underneath Jimmy's bed, to keep them out of the way, and awkwardly folds his legs up underneath himself.
Jimmy's sitting on the bed, too, leaning back against his pillows with one clutched to his stomach. He has his feet are angled to the side so they don't bump up against Jon's leg. He looks like he's holding the pillow because his stomach hurts, but Jon doesn't know what to do about it. Normally he would get a bag of ice or a spoonful of baking soda, but he has the feeling the problem isn't whatever Jimmy ate for lunch.
"You keep talking about how … about the applications," Stephen says, folding his arms across his knees. He's sitting on the corner of the bed, his feet hanging off the side of the mattress and resting on the bed frame. "But we never… We haven't talked about what you want in a school or where you might be going or what you might do when you get there," he babbles.
Swallowing, Jon puts his back against the wall. "Oh."
"And we have to," Stephen squeaks, pulling off his glasses and fiddling with the temples. "Everything's going to be different when you're gone."
Jon flushes pink and pulls at the seams of his jeans. Stephen's voice is all twisted and thin and tinny. "It's not all going to be different," he protests, glancing over at Jimmy for support. But Jimmy's just looking at his hands.
"Really? Are we going to call? Text? Are you going to visit on holidays and weekends? W-what if you go somewhere and the time zone is really different? What if all your classes are at night and I'm in bed by the time you get out? What if you like your new college friends better than us?" Stephen stammers, dropping his glasses.
Jon stares and feels bad for thinking, well, everything is going to be different then. Then he does a double-take and leans across the mattress to grab one of Stephen's wrists when he passes by the bed again. "Hey. I wouldn't ever like any of my friends better than you."
"But you'll see them all the time and you'll only see me if you visit or Skype! You won't just bump into me in the hallways or see me when we carpool and…" Stephen stops himself, his breath hitching, and he sits down in a bit of a crumple on the empty corner of the mattress.
Glancing self-consciously over at Jimmy, Jon crawls over to sit right behind Stephen and wrap his arms around Stephen's chest. "Do you remember when you went to camp for eight weeks last summer?" he asks, whispering into Stephen's ear.
Stephen sniffs and wipes at his eyes. He didn't pick up his glasses when he dropped them earlier. "Yeah," he says, wetly.
"We could only text a little bit at night. We couldn't call or see each other or spend more than an hour talking. But we got through that, didn't we?" Jon murmurs. He gives Stephen a tight hug, so Stephen's back presses against his chest.
"It's not the same!" Stephen protests, twisting his fingers up in Jon's sleeves. It stretches the fabric tight over Jon's arms, but he can't get Stephen to relax. "We knew I was coming back, to the same place, and everything would be the same," Stephen mumbles. He's taking deep breaths and shaking a little in Jon's grip.
Jon kisses the back of Stephen's head and glances over at Jimmy, who's still staring at his hands and, Jon guesses, wondering why they didn't go to Stephen's house instead, even though Mrs. Colbert would've been checking in on them there -- especially if she heard Stephen being upset. Actually Jon almost wishes one of the Fallons would check in on them. At least it would give him a minute to think.
"Well… I guess… I mean, I could show you my list of schools. If, um. It's at home, though," Jon finally says, letting go of Stephen to rub a hand over his shoulder.
Stephen sniffs, and wrings his hands together. His voice is all damp and Jon doesn't know what to do besides keep stroking Stephen's shoulder. "We have to talk about schools together, 'cause, if you go to one city and I go to another city and then we have to decide who moves where, then, then, I don't know! But it'd be really hard and if we all pick a city together t-then it'll be easier!"
"Okay," Jon mumbles, feeling a little overwhelmed.
He doesn't even know what cities he's been thinking about. It's not like he plotted them on a map. There's some here, some there, good schools… places that his mom would be proud to hear he was applying to.
Stephen wriggles out of Jon's grip so he can turn around, and Jon leans out of his way. He was expecting Stephen to be smiling, maybe, but he isn't. His face looks so open without his glasses. "So… where have you been thinking about going?"
Jon opens and shuts his mouth. "Uh…" He falters, trying to think. "Boston? And … Chicago?"
"Boston?" Stephen asks, startled. "Do you have family there?"
"No." Jon turns pink. "It just seemed … nice."
"I don't know anything about Boston," Stephen says. He takes a breath and runs a hand through his hair. "But I like Chicago."
Jon smiles, a little. He hasn't actually thought about Chicago that much. He thinks it's cold there. "It's a start?" he asks, softly.
Stephen opens his mouth, hesitates, and glances over at Jimmy, who glances back and forth between them. "It's … a start. Um. Get us that list?" he asks, covering Jon's hand with his own and smiling in that way that makes the corners of his eyes crinkle.
"Okay," Jon says.
He's got to narrow it down from 'anywhere with a name I recognize' first, though. If he can figure out what's better in a school than that.
Stephen closes his hands around Jon's, and Jon squeezes them back reflexively. "That's what you want, right? To stay together? You don't… You think it matters that we're in the same place, right?" Stephen asks, bending down a little to meet Jon's eyes.
Jon feels himself go a bit wobbly -- Stephen's eyes always do that to him. If his hands were free he'd brush Stephen's hair away from his forehead. He looks down at their hands, squeezes them again, and looks back up. He can see Jimmy pretending not to stare at them from the corner of his eye.
"If you want it," Jon murmurs, "that's what I want."
Stephen lets go of his hands to wrap his arms around Jon. "Of course that's what I want!" he says, and Jon thinks he might actually be choking from how hard Stephen is gripping him. "How could you not know that?"
"You… just… never asked," Jon says. His and Jimmy's eyes meet awkwardly, and they both look away at the same time. Jon takes a breath and tries to get his head under control. "And changed the subject whenever I talked about applications," he says, wincing as soon as he hears himself.
Stephen leans back, shaking his head. "I promise I want to stay with you," he whispers, touching his forehead to Jon's. He's got some hair falling down that tickles against Jon's hairline.
"Okay," Jon murmurs. He'd kiss Stephen on the mouth, but Jimmy's there, so he just kisses the tip of Stephen's nose instead.
And then he goes home on his own, hunched over the steering wheel and thinking about the dozens of other ways that conversation could've gone.
---
Stevie is still too little to use the big craft scissors, but Amy's mom helps them out so it's okay. She cuts out all the hearts Amy drew, and the flowers, and the dog. Then she opens up a bag of letter-shaped stickers and a glue stick, and tells them to have fun.
Amy lets Stevie draw the speech bubble next to the dog and glue the flowers on at the corners of the paper. Amy is still unsure about the hearts but Stevie thinks they really wrap up the message.
She uses the letter stickers to spell out, 'Paul you will take me to prom.'
Prom is a long way away, more than Stevie has even been alive. But Amy says that if she does not keep reminding Paul he will forget.
---
Paul is biking home from the store when he gets honked at, and he nearly falls off his bike doing a double-take to find Jon waving at him. Something in the back of Paul's head jiggles, but he can't figure out what it is, so he just waves back.
It's not until he's at the mouth of his own neighborhood that he realizes Jon was alone in the car, and he wasn't coming from the direction of Stephen's house. Paul stops his bike for a moment at the Colberts' driveway but the light in Stephen's room isn't on. And Mrs. Colbert's car is in the garage, so there's no way Paul's going to pedal into the backyard or throw pebbles at Stephen's window.
When he gets to the end of the neighborhood, Amy's doing loops around the cul-de-sac in her rollerblades. Backwards. He slides his bike into place beside her and works very hard to keep himself from tipping into her, even though they're going kind of slowly.
"Saw Jon on the way home. Stephen wasn't with him," he says, edging out of the way when Amy spreads her arms out for balance. "But he wasn't coming from this direction."
Amy shrugs, wobbles, and Paul inhales sharply before she catches herself. "He probably dropped him off at Jimmy's." She glances at the bag on Paul's back and grins. "Did they have all the stuff?"
"Everything. Even the plastic pumpkins."
"I told you they'd have the plastic pumpkins. It's almost Halloween."
Paul smiles. "I talked the cashier into taking the coupon for that x-acto knife that expired last week. And got some extra blades in case we need them," he says. Amy grins at him and he ducks his head.
Amy shakes her head and turns around sharply, her curls bobbing. Paul stops next to her mailbox to shrug his bag off, and Amy skates one last loop around the cul-de-sac before coming to a stop next to him. She claps her hands together and leans over to zip apart Paul's bag at the top.
"Ooh. You got fancy cardstock too," she says. She pulls out a pack of patterned paper that took Paul ten minutes to pick out. It's white and gold and silver. "I knew it was a good idea to send you to the store."
"That, and you can't rollerblade on public streets," Paul says.
Amy tweaks his nose and leans in to kiss him. Her lips are sticky and glossy and taste like strawberry.
Paul touches their foreheads together. "Do you think we should really keep it secret this long?" he asks. He runs a hand through Amy's curls. She's sweating a little and he just wants to bury his face in the crook of her neck.
She puts the cardstock back in his bag and zips it closed. "Well, we can tell people about the Halloween party as soon as we're done with the invites. But we should probably wait on the rest." When she sees his face she pats his cheek. "Nobody's going to be mad."
"Okay." Paul twists the handlebars on his bike.
"And when we come back, we can have a party for that, too."
That does make Paul smile. "With cake?"
"Lots of cake," Amy promises, kissing him again. She grabs his hand. "And we'll invite all our friends. C'mon, let's get inside."
Paul grins and lets her pull him towards his front door. He casts one look over his shoulder before he shuts it behind them, though, half-expecting (out of habit) to see Stephen walking down to the cul-de-sac. But nobody's there, and Amy's kissing the back of his arms, so he shuts the door and locks it.
---
"Do you ever think about your wedding?" Stephen asks, sighing.
Jimmy looks up from the magazine in his lap. His are about hors d'oeuvres and side salads and dealing with family members who don't want to go vegetarian for just one meal (Jimmy likes to cook). There's food on the cover of his.
The cover of Stephen's has a woman in a dress so tight Jimmy doesn't think she'd be able to lean down to cut the wedding cake. He likes the white tux on the bride next to her, though.
"No," Jimmy says, looking back down at a recipe for butternut squash soup.
Stephen's face falls. "Oh."
"I think about yours, though," Jimmy says, rushing to fill the silence. Stephen's face brightens again. Happy to be understood. Jimmy's chest aches a little. "I'm going to be best man, right?" Right?
"Of course," Stephen says, flipping a page. Jimmy smiles slightly. Stephen holds up the magazine. "What do you think of this bouquet?"
"Needs less ribbon."
---
Jimmy shuts the door behind Jon, because the lock is funny ever since it flooded that once and he has to jiggle it just right to get it back into place. Stephen isn't any good at it, but Jimmy bangs his hip against the right spot and the lock clicks into place.
"That went okay, huh?" Stephen asks. When Jimmy turns around, he's cleaning his glasses off on his shirt and half-smiling. "I mean, it could've gone worse, right?" Stephen puts his glasses back on and his eyes suddenly look bigger.
Jimmy tucks his arms around himself. "I guess."
Stephen falters, and what there was of his smile fades. He seems like he's actually looking at Jimmy for the first time in an hour, and Jimmy looks away from him, shuffling towards the kitchen. It's not until he's poured himself a glass of water that Stephen follows.
"He said we'd get to talk about it more," Stephen says.
"I think he'd said he'd talk to you more," Jimmy says, quietly, then stops himself. He guzzles half the glass of water while Stephen stares at him. Then Jimmy has to breathe, and he lowers the glass, absently running a fingertip around the ridge. There's a little hollow ringing noise that usually Stephen would fake-complain about but doesn't.
He shifts his weight back and forth and smoothes the wrinkles out of his shirt. "I… I don't…"
Turning to the fridge, Jimmy gets out the water filter again to refill his glass. His throat itches. "It's not a big deal," he says, slowly, spelling out the words in his head. This is the part where Stephen is supposed to agree with him.
Stephen hesitates, and Jimmy puts the filter back up, waiting.
"We'll find a place together, won't we?" Stephen asks, twisting his shirt up in his hands. Jimmy curls all ten fingers around his glass and stares down into it. "That's what we agreed on. If … if not the school, then the city, and then we can still be around each other…"
"And when you move in with Jon then you can visit me at my single dorm every other weekend," Jimmy says, biting his lip. He scuffs his foot against the floor and bangs his knee into the cabinets in the process. "Damn it," he mutters, taking a step back -- right into Stephen, who curls an arm around his shoulder.
"I don't understand," Stephen says, turning Jimmy around and holding his shoulders still. Jimmy squirms and looks everywhere -- the ceiling, the backsplash, the tiles on the floor, his last piece from art class tacked up on the fridge -- but Stephen. Stephen squeezes his shoulders. "You don't wanna move far away from me, right?" he asks, his voice pitching up slightly. "If we're in a city there'll be buses--"
Jimmy shakes his head, and pulls away from Stephen even though it hurts. But Stephen's isn't touching him because he wants to, it's just to make Jimmy stand still and listen, so Jimmy backpedals all the way to the kitchen table, where he drops into a chair and puts his hands in his lap.
"When you move in with Jon, I'll just be second. You won't think… you won't think, 'oh, I wanna see Jimmy when class is over today.' You'll be thinking about Jon," he says. "I mean, I get it. But … I'm not going to be important anymore."
Usually when he gets maudlin like this he goes and curls in a ball on his bed and plays video games until his breath doesn't hitch in his chest anymore. This is the first time he's ever said any of this out loud, and he expected it to hurt, he expected to cry, but instead the wide-eyed look on Stephen's face just makes the words pour out faster and hotter because how has Stephen not thought about any of this when it's on Jimmy's mind all the time?
"The best friend isn't important," Jimmy says, taking big breaths. "Not after -- not after someone more important comes along, like Jon. I mean, it's easy now, 'cause we're in high school and we live near each other and you don't live with Jon, but it's going to be different in college."
Stephen is picking at his nails and shifting his weight. It seems to take a moment to sink in that Jimmy's stopped talking. "You're still going to be important to me," he says, in stops and starts. "You're still going to be a part of my life."
Turning to face the table a little more, Jimmy rests one elbow on the glass top. "But not like I am now," he says. He doesn't understand why Stephen doesn't see this. "What if Jon's top school is in a city I don't want to be in? Would my opinion even matter?"
"Of course it would!"
"Really? Because he didn't talk to me at all back there," Jimmy says, his face turning bright pink. Stephen is a little red around the color, but from the way he's fidgeting it's embarrassment, not anything else. "Jon … Jon doesn't like me, Stephen," he says, his voice getting quieter until he's finally ducking his head.
"Yes he does," Stephen protests. "We hang out all the time."
"I'm not his friend. He's not…" Jimmy stops himself and stands up. The heat and speed has run out of him, and he can hear himself talk, now. He doesn't want to say anything more than he already has. "Just, never mind."
Stephen lets him walk all the way to the staircase before running over and jumping onto the first step, blocking his way upstairs.
"You're my best friend and that's not going to stop in college," Stephen says, firmly, tilting his chin up just a little.
And Jimmy wants to believe it. He does. He grips the stair railing and holds on tight.
"So you still wanna live in an apartment together after we move out of the dorms?" he asks, his heart hammering.
Stephen's eyes brighten. "Yes. Absolutely, yes."
"And Jon would be okay with that?"
That makes Stephen falter.
Jimmy lets go of the stair railing. But his heart is still pounding. "Ask him and get back to me," he says. He shakes his head and pinches the bridge of his nose. "My head hurts. I need to get some aspirin."
Stephen shuffles to the side and lets him walk up the stairs.
Part Six
Fandom: Fake News, Strangers with Candy RPF, Misc. Comics RPF
Summary: The last year of high school always means talking about the future. Even when some people still have another year left after this.
Character/Pairing: Jon/Stephen, Amy/Paul, Jimmy, Denis, Janeane
Rating: PG, some cursing
Length: ~3,500 words (this part), ~24,500 words (total)
Disclaimer: All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for-profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libelous, defamatory, or in any way factual.
Notes: Flashbacks are in italics. "Stevie" (in the fic) is the name Stephen went by as a little kid. Also, several characters in this story are asexual. Hallelujah It's Raining Labels, this Psychology Today article, this Lexicon, and this definition of queerplatonic may be useful if you want to look into asexuality and related concepts.
Thanks: Thanks to
politicette and paperscribe for in-depth beta services and everyone who commented on the first few thousand words of this story and told me to keep going with it. Thanks to aybara_max for the wonderful art.The first time they kiss, really kiss, not Stephen pecking him on the cheek and then running away on the playground, Jon ends up twisting Stephen's shirt in his hands like he's afraid Stephen is going to slip away. It just makes Stephen laugh into Jon's mouth and pull him closer.
Nobody ever asks him if he thinks Stephen was serious, when they were kids, and Stephen used to make him play 'wedding.' No one ever asks him if Stephen ever talks about playing like that.
He doesn't, by the way. Stephen.
Since his mom thought it was so cute, Jon still has a lot of photos from the wedding game. Sometimes he looks at them and wonders whether Stephen remembers the white dress that used to swap between them.
But mostly the photo box stays on his shelf. Jon doesn't know if he should ask Stephen about the games, or the dress.
---
"So, um. What do you … what do you want to ask me about?" Jon asks, untying his laces. He pushes his shoes underneath Jimmy's bed, to keep them out of the way, and awkwardly folds his legs up underneath himself.
Jimmy's sitting on the bed, too, leaning back against his pillows with one clutched to his stomach. He has his feet are angled to the side so they don't bump up against Jon's leg. He looks like he's holding the pillow because his stomach hurts, but Jon doesn't know what to do about it. Normally he would get a bag of ice or a spoonful of baking soda, but he has the feeling the problem isn't whatever Jimmy ate for lunch.
"You keep talking about how … about the applications," Stephen says, folding his arms across his knees. He's sitting on the corner of the bed, his feet hanging off the side of the mattress and resting on the bed frame. "But we never… We haven't talked about what you want in a school or where you might be going or what you might do when you get there," he babbles.
Swallowing, Jon puts his back against the wall. "Oh."
"And we have to," Stephen squeaks, pulling off his glasses and fiddling with the temples. "Everything's going to be different when you're gone."
Jon flushes pink and pulls at the seams of his jeans. Stephen's voice is all twisted and thin and tinny. "It's not all going to be different," he protests, glancing over at Jimmy for support. But Jimmy's just looking at his hands.
"Really? Are we going to call? Text? Are you going to visit on holidays and weekends? W-what if you go somewhere and the time zone is really different? What if all your classes are at night and I'm in bed by the time you get out? What if you like your new college friends better than us?" Stephen stammers, dropping his glasses.
Jon stares and feels bad for thinking, well, everything is going to be different then. Then he does a double-take and leans across the mattress to grab one of Stephen's wrists when he passes by the bed again. "Hey. I wouldn't ever like any of my friends better than you."
"But you'll see them all the time and you'll only see me if you visit or Skype! You won't just bump into me in the hallways or see me when we carpool and…" Stephen stops himself, his breath hitching, and he sits down in a bit of a crumple on the empty corner of the mattress.
Glancing self-consciously over at Jimmy, Jon crawls over to sit right behind Stephen and wrap his arms around Stephen's chest. "Do you remember when you went to camp for eight weeks last summer?" he asks, whispering into Stephen's ear.
Stephen sniffs and wipes at his eyes. He didn't pick up his glasses when he dropped them earlier. "Yeah," he says, wetly.
"We could only text a little bit at night. We couldn't call or see each other or spend more than an hour talking. But we got through that, didn't we?" Jon murmurs. He gives Stephen a tight hug, so Stephen's back presses against his chest.
"It's not the same!" Stephen protests, twisting his fingers up in Jon's sleeves. It stretches the fabric tight over Jon's arms, but he can't get Stephen to relax. "We knew I was coming back, to the same place, and everything would be the same," Stephen mumbles. He's taking deep breaths and shaking a little in Jon's grip.
Jon kisses the back of Stephen's head and glances over at Jimmy, who's still staring at his hands and, Jon guesses, wondering why they didn't go to Stephen's house instead, even though Mrs. Colbert would've been checking in on them there -- especially if she heard Stephen being upset. Actually Jon almost wishes one of the Fallons would check in on them. At least it would give him a minute to think.
"Well… I guess… I mean, I could show you my list of schools. If, um. It's at home, though," Jon finally says, letting go of Stephen to rub a hand over his shoulder.
Stephen sniffs, and wrings his hands together. His voice is all damp and Jon doesn't know what to do besides keep stroking Stephen's shoulder. "We have to talk about schools together, 'cause, if you go to one city and I go to another city and then we have to decide who moves where, then, then, I don't know! But it'd be really hard and if we all pick a city together t-then it'll be easier!"
"Okay," Jon mumbles, feeling a little overwhelmed.
He doesn't even know what cities he's been thinking about. It's not like he plotted them on a map. There's some here, some there, good schools… places that his mom would be proud to hear he was applying to.
Stephen wriggles out of Jon's grip so he can turn around, and Jon leans out of his way. He was expecting Stephen to be smiling, maybe, but he isn't. His face looks so open without his glasses. "So… where have you been thinking about going?"
Jon opens and shuts his mouth. "Uh…" He falters, trying to think. "Boston? And … Chicago?"
"Boston?" Stephen asks, startled. "Do you have family there?"
"No." Jon turns pink. "It just seemed … nice."
"I don't know anything about Boston," Stephen says. He takes a breath and runs a hand through his hair. "But I like Chicago."
Jon smiles, a little. He hasn't actually thought about Chicago that much. He thinks it's cold there. "It's a start?" he asks, softly.
Stephen opens his mouth, hesitates, and glances over at Jimmy, who glances back and forth between them. "It's … a start. Um. Get us that list?" he asks, covering Jon's hand with his own and smiling in that way that makes the corners of his eyes crinkle.
"Okay," Jon says.
He's got to narrow it down from 'anywhere with a name I recognize' first, though. If he can figure out what's better in a school than that.
Stephen closes his hands around Jon's, and Jon squeezes them back reflexively. "That's what you want, right? To stay together? You don't… You think it matters that we're in the same place, right?" Stephen asks, bending down a little to meet Jon's eyes.
Jon feels himself go a bit wobbly -- Stephen's eyes always do that to him. If his hands were free he'd brush Stephen's hair away from his forehead. He looks down at their hands, squeezes them again, and looks back up. He can see Jimmy pretending not to stare at them from the corner of his eye.
"If you want it," Jon murmurs, "that's what I want."
Stephen lets go of his hands to wrap his arms around Jon. "Of course that's what I want!" he says, and Jon thinks he might actually be choking from how hard Stephen is gripping him. "How could you not know that?"
"You… just… never asked," Jon says. His and Jimmy's eyes meet awkwardly, and they both look away at the same time. Jon takes a breath and tries to get his head under control. "And changed the subject whenever I talked about applications," he says, wincing as soon as he hears himself.
Stephen leans back, shaking his head. "I promise I want to stay with you," he whispers, touching his forehead to Jon's. He's got some hair falling down that tickles against Jon's hairline.
"Okay," Jon murmurs. He'd kiss Stephen on the mouth, but Jimmy's there, so he just kisses the tip of Stephen's nose instead.
And then he goes home on his own, hunched over the steering wheel and thinking about the dozens of other ways that conversation could've gone.
---
Stevie is still too little to use the big craft scissors, but Amy's mom helps them out so it's okay. She cuts out all the hearts Amy drew, and the flowers, and the dog. Then she opens up a bag of letter-shaped stickers and a glue stick, and tells them to have fun.
Amy lets Stevie draw the speech bubble next to the dog and glue the flowers on at the corners of the paper. Amy is still unsure about the hearts but Stevie thinks they really wrap up the message.
She uses the letter stickers to spell out, 'Paul you will take me to prom.'
Prom is a long way away, more than Stevie has even been alive. But Amy says that if she does not keep reminding Paul he will forget.
---
Paul is biking home from the store when he gets honked at, and he nearly falls off his bike doing a double-take to find Jon waving at him. Something in the back of Paul's head jiggles, but he can't figure out what it is, so he just waves back.
It's not until he's at the mouth of his own neighborhood that he realizes Jon was alone in the car, and he wasn't coming from the direction of Stephen's house. Paul stops his bike for a moment at the Colberts' driveway but the light in Stephen's room isn't on. And Mrs. Colbert's car is in the garage, so there's no way Paul's going to pedal into the backyard or throw pebbles at Stephen's window.
When he gets to the end of the neighborhood, Amy's doing loops around the cul-de-sac in her rollerblades. Backwards. He slides his bike into place beside her and works very hard to keep himself from tipping into her, even though they're going kind of slowly.
"Saw Jon on the way home. Stephen wasn't with him," he says, edging out of the way when Amy spreads her arms out for balance. "But he wasn't coming from this direction."
Amy shrugs, wobbles, and Paul inhales sharply before she catches herself. "He probably dropped him off at Jimmy's." She glances at the bag on Paul's back and grins. "Did they have all the stuff?"
"Everything. Even the plastic pumpkins."
"I told you they'd have the plastic pumpkins. It's almost Halloween."
Paul smiles. "I talked the cashier into taking the coupon for that x-acto knife that expired last week. And got some extra blades in case we need them," he says. Amy grins at him and he ducks his head.
Amy shakes her head and turns around sharply, her curls bobbing. Paul stops next to her mailbox to shrug his bag off, and Amy skates one last loop around the cul-de-sac before coming to a stop next to him. She claps her hands together and leans over to zip apart Paul's bag at the top.
"Ooh. You got fancy cardstock too," she says. She pulls out a pack of patterned paper that took Paul ten minutes to pick out. It's white and gold and silver. "I knew it was a good idea to send you to the store."
"That, and you can't rollerblade on public streets," Paul says.
Amy tweaks his nose and leans in to kiss him. Her lips are sticky and glossy and taste like strawberry.
Paul touches their foreheads together. "Do you think we should really keep it secret this long?" he asks. He runs a hand through Amy's curls. She's sweating a little and he just wants to bury his face in the crook of her neck.
She puts the cardstock back in his bag and zips it closed. "Well, we can tell people about the Halloween party as soon as we're done with the invites. But we should probably wait on the rest." When she sees his face she pats his cheek. "Nobody's going to be mad."
"Okay." Paul twists the handlebars on his bike.
"And when we come back, we can have a party for that, too."
That does make Paul smile. "With cake?"
"Lots of cake," Amy promises, kissing him again. She grabs his hand. "And we'll invite all our friends. C'mon, let's get inside."
Paul grins and lets her pull him towards his front door. He casts one look over his shoulder before he shuts it behind them, though, half-expecting (out of habit) to see Stephen walking down to the cul-de-sac. But nobody's there, and Amy's kissing the back of his arms, so he shuts the door and locks it.
---
"Do you ever think about your wedding?" Stephen asks, sighing.
Jimmy looks up from the magazine in his lap. His are about hors d'oeuvres and side salads and dealing with family members who don't want to go vegetarian for just one meal (Jimmy likes to cook). There's food on the cover of his.
The cover of Stephen's has a woman in a dress so tight Jimmy doesn't think she'd be able to lean down to cut the wedding cake. He likes the white tux on the bride next to her, though.
"No," Jimmy says, looking back down at a recipe for butternut squash soup.
Stephen's face falls. "Oh."
"I think about yours, though," Jimmy says, rushing to fill the silence. Stephen's face brightens again. Happy to be understood. Jimmy's chest aches a little. "I'm going to be best man, right?" Right?
"Of course," Stephen says, flipping a page. Jimmy smiles slightly. Stephen holds up the magazine. "What do you think of this bouquet?"
"Needs less ribbon."
---
Jimmy shuts the door behind Jon, because the lock is funny ever since it flooded that once and he has to jiggle it just right to get it back into place. Stephen isn't any good at it, but Jimmy bangs his hip against the right spot and the lock clicks into place.
"That went okay, huh?" Stephen asks. When Jimmy turns around, he's cleaning his glasses off on his shirt and half-smiling. "I mean, it could've gone worse, right?" Stephen puts his glasses back on and his eyes suddenly look bigger.
Jimmy tucks his arms around himself. "I guess."
Stephen falters, and what there was of his smile fades. He seems like he's actually looking at Jimmy for the first time in an hour, and Jimmy looks away from him, shuffling towards the kitchen. It's not until he's poured himself a glass of water that Stephen follows.
"He said we'd get to talk about it more," Stephen says.
"I think he'd said he'd talk to you more," Jimmy says, quietly, then stops himself. He guzzles half the glass of water while Stephen stares at him. Then Jimmy has to breathe, and he lowers the glass, absently running a fingertip around the ridge. There's a little hollow ringing noise that usually Stephen would fake-complain about but doesn't.
He shifts his weight back and forth and smoothes the wrinkles out of his shirt. "I… I don't…"
Turning to the fridge, Jimmy gets out the water filter again to refill his glass. His throat itches. "It's not a big deal," he says, slowly, spelling out the words in his head. This is the part where Stephen is supposed to agree with him.
Stephen hesitates, and Jimmy puts the filter back up, waiting.
"We'll find a place together, won't we?" Stephen asks, twisting his shirt up in his hands. Jimmy curls all ten fingers around his glass and stares down into it. "That's what we agreed on. If … if not the school, then the city, and then we can still be around each other…"
"And when you move in with Jon then you can visit me at my single dorm every other weekend," Jimmy says, biting his lip. He scuffs his foot against the floor and bangs his knee into the cabinets in the process. "Damn it," he mutters, taking a step back -- right into Stephen, who curls an arm around his shoulder.
"I don't understand," Stephen says, turning Jimmy around and holding his shoulders still. Jimmy squirms and looks everywhere -- the ceiling, the backsplash, the tiles on the floor, his last piece from art class tacked up on the fridge -- but Stephen. Stephen squeezes his shoulders. "You don't wanna move far away from me, right?" he asks, his voice pitching up slightly. "If we're in a city there'll be buses--"
Jimmy shakes his head, and pulls away from Stephen even though it hurts. But Stephen's isn't touching him because he wants to, it's just to make Jimmy stand still and listen, so Jimmy backpedals all the way to the kitchen table, where he drops into a chair and puts his hands in his lap.
"When you move in with Jon, I'll just be second. You won't think… you won't think, 'oh, I wanna see Jimmy when class is over today.' You'll be thinking about Jon," he says. "I mean, I get it. But … I'm not going to be important anymore."
Usually when he gets maudlin like this he goes and curls in a ball on his bed and plays video games until his breath doesn't hitch in his chest anymore. This is the first time he's ever said any of this out loud, and he expected it to hurt, he expected to cry, but instead the wide-eyed look on Stephen's face just makes the words pour out faster and hotter because how has Stephen not thought about any of this when it's on Jimmy's mind all the time?
"The best friend isn't important," Jimmy says, taking big breaths. "Not after -- not after someone more important comes along, like Jon. I mean, it's easy now, 'cause we're in high school and we live near each other and you don't live with Jon, but it's going to be different in college."
Stephen is picking at his nails and shifting his weight. It seems to take a moment to sink in that Jimmy's stopped talking. "You're still going to be important to me," he says, in stops and starts. "You're still going to be a part of my life."
Turning to face the table a little more, Jimmy rests one elbow on the glass top. "But not like I am now," he says. He doesn't understand why Stephen doesn't see this. "What if Jon's top school is in a city I don't want to be in? Would my opinion even matter?"
"Of course it would!"
"Really? Because he didn't talk to me at all back there," Jimmy says, his face turning bright pink. Stephen is a little red around the color, but from the way he's fidgeting it's embarrassment, not anything else. "Jon … Jon doesn't like me, Stephen," he says, his voice getting quieter until he's finally ducking his head.
"Yes he does," Stephen protests. "We hang out all the time."
"I'm not his friend. He's not…" Jimmy stops himself and stands up. The heat and speed has run out of him, and he can hear himself talk, now. He doesn't want to say anything more than he already has. "Just, never mind."
Stephen lets him walk all the way to the staircase before running over and jumping onto the first step, blocking his way upstairs.
"You're my best friend and that's not going to stop in college," Stephen says, firmly, tilting his chin up just a little.
And Jimmy wants to believe it. He does. He grips the stair railing and holds on tight.
"So you still wanna live in an apartment together after we move out of the dorms?" he asks, his heart hammering.
Stephen's eyes brighten. "Yes. Absolutely, yes."
"And Jon would be okay with that?"
That makes Stephen falter.
Jimmy lets go of the stair railing. But his heart is still pounding. "Ask him and get back to me," he says. He shakes his head and pinches the bridge of his nose. "My head hurts. I need to get some aspirin."
Stephen shuffles to the side and lets him walk up the stairs.
Part Six