ulrich isn’t exactly tired, but that doesn’t stop him from laying the day away in bed. safe to say he’s bored as can be, a little bit lost without the easiest friend to get along with in the house. which is not to say of course that he’s not perfectly willing to hang out with jer because he is! he absolutely is. things have just been … awkward, and in true ulrich form he is incredibly, terribly, awkward about that. not that he’s really going to admit that out loud.
with jeremie knocking on his door though, he sits up so fast the blood rushes to his head, making him lightheaded. when he sees his friend standing in the door, his eyes are a bit too wide - the world is a bit too bright, for a second there.
“oh, uh. yeah sure, man. let’s go.” // @jercmie
jeremie laughs, loud and raucous, because this is one of his few good days where the lights just feel like warmth rather than like burning, and ulrich is funny even when he doesn’t mean to be. for today, it doesn’t matter that things have been stilted since their date, that the two of them haven’t had one of their talks for almost a month, that it has seemed as if ulrich didn’t want to see him at all. today, jeremie is confident and happy and a million things he never is, just for today.
he leans against the doorway to ulrich’s room with his grin still wide, still outrageously pleased. he has his skateboard set against the wall near the apartment door in a line with everyone else’s, the same one that had replaced his scooter when he was nineteen. it’s beat up, but it still rides like a dream.
jeremie bangs on the wall next to ulrich’s door to the beat of a vine he couldn’t remember the words to go along with, glad that odd and yumi were out doing something together and that ulrich and the zoo were the only witnesses to the sporadic energy he found himself sporting.
“up and at em, stern! you’re taking me skating,” he says as he steps into the room, leaning against the doorway.
ulrich spends entirely too much of his free time close to the water for someone who really doesn’t enjoy water. but what can he say? when he’s interested in someone he’s certainly interested, and there’s nothing that he can do about it. not that there’s anything he’d want to do about it. yumi is one of the most interesting people that he’s met in a long time. she doesn’t take any shit but gives him quite a bit in turn. she’s fun to be around, and makes him happy. she’s his friend, and that is why he can’t breathe when he takes a corner and sees her spread across the ground, a figure looming over her.
“yumi!” he calls out, stumbling over a few steps forward. // @jercmie
jeremie is on his way to see yumi, something he does a lot for an unseelie who isn’t meant to show much interest in anyone aside from the other unseelies. she’s someone to protect, something that jeremie has always wanted, and she’s someone who sees the world the same way he does: in people with good intentions, and people to be rid of. he’s shocked as he comes upon a scene near yumi’s lake that shocks and scares him, and he’s immediately into action as he hears the elf in front of him shouting for his friend. the elf must know her too, and that’s enough to make jeremie trust him, if even for a moment.
to incapacitate a creature like yumi, there’s a limited number of things it could be. his mind races as he thinks, and he decides that it’s a strigoi because he has to do something, even if it doesn’t work. jeremie mutters a curse beneath his breath, one he learned from witches long ago, and sends the strigoi flying, only for it to get back up.
“check on her! make sure she’s alive!” jeremie shouts to yumi’s friend, rushing toward where the strigoi’s body flew.
The frost was cold against his cheeks, the air was frigid as it passed into his lungs and Odd was ducked behind a tree like the animal that he was. Deep breaths stung, the smile on his face just short of impish as he crushed ice between his palms. Two more seconds and then he would be in range. Just patience, that’s what this game was all about, Odd knowing it better than he knew the back of his own hand. Which was pretty well.
Coming around the side of the tree, he launched the ball full force into the face of his opponent, none other than Jeremie Belpois ─ a loud AHA escaping as he moved. // @jercmie
Jeremie was not athletic. He was not skilled in any kind of fighting style or sport, but there was one thing he was veritably good at: object avoidance. He did not like to be hit, which was half of his problem with the sparring that Ulrich tried to train him in, or in the light self defense that Yumi would like him to know. As soon as he saw a snowball coming in his direction, it wasn’t a question of decision but rather just reflex, moving to the right and stepping back. It wasn’t enough with how close Odd was, and Jeremie knew it was Odd; he’d know that laughter anywhere.
“Odd Della Robbia, I will buy only almond milk for the next three weeks, I swear to you,” Jeremie said, taking off his glasses to clean them. @odddella
ulrich doesn’t expect for jeremie to approach him then, and for a moment he doesn’t know what to expect. then jeremie lays a hand on his elbow, centering him, grounding him to the here and now in the way that he always does. he looks him in the face and speaks so softly, not betraying any hint of emotion in his voice. emotions that he must be feeling, must be, because he has to feel something about this. he has to want this, since he was the one who asked for this. doesn’t he?
“do you not want to do this?” he asks, wincing visibly at the way his voice catching in his throat. he clears it as quietly as he can manage, and holds the eye contact. if he can do anything, he can do that.
did ulrich do something to make jeremie give him an out? did he do something wrong? the thought pushes against his throat in a way that’s all too familiar; he can’t do this to jeremie, not jer, not him. jeremie puts up with so much from the lot of them. puts up with the way that ulrich isolates himself with odd, puts up with the way that ulrich never seems to know what to say, puts up with the way that he treats yumi, leaving jeremie to sort things out. “we don’t have to do it if you don’t want to. i just thought … ”
he sees the way that ulrich immediately takes the blame for the out that jeremie gives him, as if there is a blame to be taken, something to be shouldered by ulrich alone. jeremie didn't mean to make him feel unwanted, like jeremie didn't want those things with ulrich; he wants a million things with ulrich that he cannot begin to name, but none of them matter, not if they make ulrich any kind of uncomfortable. jeremie's hand migrates from ulrich's elbow to his shoulder unbidden, and he thinks about all the times he has wanted to protect ulrich from the world outside with nothing but his own two hands, and he doesn't know how to protect this boy from the world inside of himself, the blame and the guilt. he doesn't know how to kill his own demons either.
"hey. of course i want this. my wanting this will not go away. it can wait or it can be simpler or different or anything you want, ulrich. i just want to be with you," jeremie says, breathing out through his nose in a way he ruthlessly limits, not wanting to sound disappointed or sad or anything at all.
the hand on ulrich's shoulder doesn't feel like enough. he feels the need to touch ulrich more and holds himself back from them just as ruthlessly as anything else, because none of them are always good with touch. he can't touch his friends just because he wants, he can't reach out and ruin things with his stained fingertips. they don't deserve it.
My dad was buried today. I don't know how long it will take me to actually tell you this time. This feels like the hundredth letter I've penned to the best friends that I could tell anything with ease, with no effort at all - we live together. Not telling you guys should be so much harder than telling you, but somehow when I think of you, the words won't come. There are so many things I've written down in this notebook that I'll never be able to say aloud, and I'm sorry for that, but not as sorry as I would be for saying it at all. I have broken enough here. I don't need to layer you guys with my bullshit.
My mom asked how you guys were. I don't tell her about the way your hands shake, Yumi, don't worry, I only tell her about your smile when you look at Kit. I don't tell her about the missed meals and the missed time, Odd, just the excited phone calls where you have to tell me something right away, where you sound so excited I could die. Ulrich, I don't tell her about your silence, or your hand in mine, or the way sometimes it feels like you're going to shake apart right in front of me - I tell her about the way you want to teach me to defend myself, the way you care so quiet but it's never hard to hear you. I don't tell her about our broken parts. I'm sorry I broke all of us.
I don't know what she's going to do without my dad. They've been together for thirty years, since my mom was fourteen, and I don't know if she knows who to be without him. I want to think that she does, but I know that I've only had the three of you for less than a third of the time, and I don't know who I would be. I'm so scared of losing you that it burns in the back of my throat every time I remember that I could. I can't get your code back from the universe. Be careful.
I'm glad you guys aren't here. Normal people, they go through hard things, and they want their loved ones there because, well, things are hard, but they're easier with the universal you around. I don't want the three of you here to see me break. I cried yesterday. Don't know how long it had been, since I cried without having been asleep immediately prior. Sometimes, I think that maybe Ulrich tells the truth about how he feels more than I do. At least his silence is honest.
I want to spend an entire page writing apologies that the three of you will never read, would never understand if you heard, but I'm so sorry. I'm sorry that the only support I can provide is money, and I'm sorry that I tell all of you to open up about everything and never tell you a thing. I'm sorry that I told you I was going on a business trip. I'm sorry that the idea of telling you that I am mourning feels like defeat because the idea of being comforted by any of you feels like giving in and giving up and showing that I'm still not good enough for the three of you. I'll never be good enough for the three of you.
I've written letters to William and Aelita that look like a long string of code because I can never keep it together. I'll write a symphony in C++ before I am able to express myself like a normal human being, and I'm still writing letters I'll never send because we live in the same apartment and be fucked if I can watch you learn how to hate me, learn how to pity me. I can't and I won't and I'm sorry.
ulrich has no idea what he’s doing. he has no idea how any of this works, how any of it is supposed to work, and how it’s going to work out. somehow in the span of a couple weeks he’s gone from casually sleeping with (both literally and per the expression) with one of his best friends and trying not to admit his feelings for the others to … this. to still casually sleeping with his best friend but also going out on dates. dates. plural. as in more than one date, in less than two weeks. how is he meant to deal with this? before this past week, he’d never been on a real date in his life. sure, he’d taken a couple girls out in middle and high school (whether he wanted to or not). but this … these. they mean something. he’s never been so scared of a concept in his entire life, and he’s been at war before.
well. it felt like war anyway.
this doesn’t feel at all like war, but it’s still absolutely terrifying. he’s fidgety as he waits in the living room for jeremie, hands shoved into his pockets in the hopes that it will steady him. it’s not really working. really not working when jeremie steps out and he’s immediately, fiercely reminded of what they’re doing here. “i’m ready,” he says, his voice small before he clears his throat as well. “i’m ready,” he repeats, mustering up a smile. “let’s go.”
jeremie looks at him categorically, the way he always has to in order to access the care he needs to give to his three young soldiers, the ones he's already ruined and still trying so hardly to repay. ulrich looks nervous, on just this side of a panic attack really, and jeremie doesn't want to be the one to do this to him, doesn't want to let anyone make ulrich this reactant, not when ulrich is usually the calm, collected one of the four of them. he clears the room and puts a hand on ulrich's elbow, looking at him in a way that tries not to feel calculating with its softness, but still comes close.
"we don't have to do this, ulrich," he says, and he doesn't feel disappointed by the prospect at all, because this is ulrich, and ulrich is important before himself in every single way.
he has never wanted to make ulrich uncomfortable. he never should have asked him on this date; ulrich was obviously overwhelmed by the date with yumi, and jeremie just went and made it worse, asking him on another so soon, he shouldn't have done this. he has come back from ruining everything before and he can do it again, no matter how hard it was the first time and how different the circumstances always were, how much things tend to change. he doesn't care how this goes, so long as ulrich is comfortable.
