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“I have no idea, Thomas,” Seong chuckled. “It’s just something Brutus sends to me when he thinks I’ve been up too long. I agree though. It’s weirdly soothing.”
“Mhm,” Thomas murmured, settling deeper into his pillow.
Seong watched him for a while longer as his breathing slowed. He wondered how long he would get to have moments like these, to have the privilege of being the person who helped Thomas ease into sleep.
“Hey Seong,” Thomas murmured, startling him hard enough that his shin hit the bar of his desk.
“Jesus, Thomas,” he wheezed, laughing at himself as he rubbed at the spot. “You scared me! I thought you fell asleep.”
Eyes still closed, Thomas smirked. “Sorry,” he said, not sounding particularly sorry at all. “I just… wanted to ask you something.”
“You can ask me anything,” Seong reminded him. “Anything at all.”
Thomas’s face remained relaxed, his breathing slow, and Seong wondered if he had dozed off again. “We… we always talked about my relationships. But never really yours. I know the Zoo is close and you can’t really tell me about them but…” He trailed off and Seong waited, his heart in his throat.
Maybe he’ll fall asleep before—
“Are you seeing anyone? Romantically?”
Seong grimaced. He had always hated when people asked him that and it felt particularly treacherous with Thomas. After all, Seong had practically thrown himself into the other man’s arms the other day, had been a breath away from kissing him when he knew Thomas was still in a relationship. That was enough to not be a particularly good person in the eyes of many outside of there situation but… “There’s a guy I hook up with sometimes,” he admitted. “We aren’t dating or anything like that. We both just have busy schedules and if we both have time we meet up and chat for a while and—” Please stop talking, he begged himself, feeling his face burning. “It’s not romantic,” he finished, watching Thomas’s brow wrinkle.
“Do you like him?”
“He’s a good guy,” Seong said, thinking about all the conversations he had had over the last few months with Ray. Conversations that Ray was not shy about pointing out were timed whenever Seong didn’t want to think about Thomas. Not that Ray minded, just that he was going to call Seong out for it. “You’d probably like him actually. He’s a good friend to talk your thoughts out with.”
Thomas puffed out a laugh. “Sounds like a therapist… or Issac.”
Seong paused at the mention of Issac. He knew that Issac and Thomas were close— that Issac was the person Thomas turned to when he needed an “adult” to talk to that wasn’t his aunts. Obviously Issac and Thomas were not having a physical relationship for various reasons, including but not limited to Felinus being completely monogamous and Issac seeming to be too. “He’s a bit like my Issac,” he agreed. “I like to talk to him about things I don’t feel like I can talk to others about.”
“Like what,” the voice murmured, sounding so close to drifting off.
Like you, Seong thought, gazing at the screen as Thomas’s lips parted slightly and he breathed slowly. He waited to see if he’d stir again, tracing patterns in his freckles with his eyes. “Good night, Thomas,” he murmured when he didn’t speak again and turned back to his project.
BFF’s Forever
Thomas had done what he could to make it clear that he did not want the friendships between Kevin, Mark, and Danny or the ones between his aunts, Marcus, and Sean to be affected by his break-up with Danny.
The “parental units,” as Kevin had dubbed the latter, seemed to have figured it out. Marcus and Sean had been friends before they had introduced the other three, and while Thomas was sure their friendship with his aunts had started as a “bitch and sip” about the four of them, it wasn’t the only reason. Marcus, he knew, had liked Ceri the second she started tearing into Fergus O’Hare about not vetting people better; Sean and Jessi had bonded over a shared love of painting, to the point that the two of them had actually gone to painting events without Ceri or Marcus.
Kevin and Mark’s relationship with Danny had changed. They were quick to tell Thomas that it wasn’t them thinking they couldn’t be friends with Thomas and Danny both.
To say Kevin had been pissed about how Danny had handled the situation would be an understatement. Apparently his comment to Thomas that first Monday after Thomas and Danny’s date hadn’t completely been a joke. There were things that Kevin and Mark had noticed about Danny that they didn’t particularly like, but had put up with because of the friendship between Marcus and Sean.
“It was easy to ignore how self-centered he was when he was just a friend,” Mark had explained at brunch as Kevin nodded along. “Then you two started dating and it was getting harder to see him putting himself first. Honestly, Kev and I were heavily debating on the trip coming back and having a serious talk with you about if you actually wanted this.”
“There may or may not have been plans to hold a intervention-style meeting if you didn’t break up with him after all of that,” Kevin had piped in after he managed to swallow a massive amount of pancakes. “Then we found out he did it over an email like a coward, only to try to twist it around to blame someone else.”
Thomas raised an eyebrow, then shook his head. “I don’t want to know,” he said firmly. “I appreciate you guys wanting to look out for me but—”
“There’s no buts about it, Thomas,” Mark said seriously. “He crossed the line. It was one thing when he had his fit about the signing. That was just a miscommunication. But for him to actually experience that entire situation and only think of himself and his baseball career? That was so over the line I nearly punched his lights out.” He reached over to cover Thomas’s hand, squeezing it. “We don’t know what they did to make you leave the hotel,” he said keeping his voice low, “and we don’t need to know the details if you don’t want to talk about it. But what we do know is you only did it to protect us. We can’t thank you enough for that, Thomas. We,” his other hand stretched to Kevin and Kevin took it, holding his fingers tight, “want to keep this group going. No matter the distance. Whenever you need a friend, you always have Kevin and me, got it?”
Thomas smiled. “Got it,” he agreed, then glanced at their hands as Mark rubbed at Kevin’s fingers. “Now… is there something you two have to tell me?”
Both of them blushed.
All The Time In The World
Thomas sat back in his chair, looking around the dorm room with pursed lips. His side of the room was covered in posters of bands, coding related jokes and references, and a pride flag. A picture of him, Mark, and Kevin right before they had to leave for school was pinned on a new cork board behind him, as well as a picture of him and his aunts when he had gone with Marcus to pick them up from the airport.
