Jean's boot makes an obtrusive crunching noise before he slips back onto the cold ground. He mumbles something about how crunch and slush should be dichotomous, while gratefully accepting a hard grip upward from Marco.
Hair wet and matted to his forehead, Marco silently kicks over the night's two carefully constructed snow lanterns. Months into the coldest, wettest season in Trost's recent memory, and he's learned to construct these bright little vestiges with deftness and ease.
Something in Jean goes out with the lantern, especially when Marco's freckles disappear into the moonlight.
On their way out of the park, delicate white wisps drift down aimlessly, and each of them keeps their eyes on the clouds above. They eventually reach the end of the block, where typically annoying choices occur, and hesitant farewells are exchanged. Tonight, on the other hand, Jean simply shoulder's Marco in a preferable direction while keeping his eyes toward the sky.
Content to see Marco oblige, Jean says nothing, but punctuates the winter silence by humming something he means to resemble Sunday Bloody Sunday. The quality of his effort becomes so much better when Marco decides to hum along.
Back inside, the two of them shake off the cold from the more comforting side of a flake-frosted sliding glass door. Marco makes himself comfortable on Jean's couch, pleasantly surprised to see the indent of his own head still across the pillow that no longer smells like an old basement apartment.
Jean's gone off somewhere and left Marco to his own devices, and he can think of nothing better than to situate his head back onto that same pillow. Beaten nearly flat and having likely seen countless people resituate and drool all over it, to Marco the pillow is the epitome of comfort. To start, it isn't made out of snow. More importantly, the pathetic physical state of the thing is as good as a promise that it's been passed from one person to another in a gesture of familiarity and comfort.
Despite his own home being right down the street, these days Marco is learning all about gestures and familiarity, and how they aren't always accompanied by the right of comfort.
It's nice here, Marco thinks. As much for the invitation to be a fixture in Jean's private space, as for the family whose footsteps he can hear traipsing above.
Above, where Jean has apparently run off to, is filled by warm voices and the clinking of dishes, and Marco works now to discern Jean's voice from the rest. It's not his family, he reminds himself, but there's solace enough in knowing people like these exist, even if he can't claim them as his own.
There's momentary clarity to the banter with the opening of the basement door, and then the sound of Jean's socked feet fast on the steps before finally hitting the plush carpet of the basement floor.
Marco's yet to open his eyes, wanting instead to rely on his other senses in order to better learn the little idiosyncrasies that make up Jean. All this earns him is the pillow being pulled out from beneath his head; a crime assuaged only by the sight of the person in question scooting behind him.
"What were you doing up there?"
Warmed fingers begin a gentle slide through Marco's thick hair, its usual mahogany made wet and bland from lying in the snow.
"My family likes it when I make an appearance every now and then." Jean speaks with skepticism, replete with notions that he's too busy with classes and some new collegiate level of introspection to stop being one of the people under the stairs. For now, anyway, he and Marco allow the façade to stand, because this is easier for Jean to digest than to admit he doesn't know how to talk to the family that loves him when he's so deep in his depression.
If nothing else, he's grateful for their own attempts, and that they aren't beyond coming to him. At the end of the day when there seems nothing but miasma waiting for him, there is something in knowing they see him try.
And then, he has Marco, whose head he now stills, while running a comb through his hair lest he try and turn around.
"Sit still if you don't want it pulled."
"You're brushing my hair."
"I'm combing your hair."
"Why."
"Why not?"
With this, Marco concedes to Jean's whims while gently lying back against his chest.
It's difficult to watch anyone who was once so vibrant close in on himself, especially while maintaining the exemplar grades and efforts requisite to one day establishing a better life. But what hurts is that right now, that formerly vibrant person happens to be Marco. And what makes it painful is knowing that Jean is unable to tell him what to do.
Betrayed, hurt, combatting a new and unexpected internal conflict against shame—Marco sums it all up as just being sort of angry, which no one in this particular house is about to take away from him. But then, in the basement Jean is the only one to regularly witness the severity overtaking his best friend.
Their silence is interrupted by Jean's own voice when scoffing laughter bubbles out of his throat. Turning his neck sideways, Marco's nose traces the side of Jean's neck while asking what exactly is so funny.
"The cowlick in the back is such a shithead." At this, even Marco can't help the grin creeping onto his face. The more Jean tries to smooth the disobedient hair, the wider Marco smiles, and it's all manna to Jean.
"It's been doing that since grade school. You do know that, right?"
"Shut up, Bodt. I'm already getting enough sass from all of this hair."
The only reply he gets is Marco nestling deeper into his chest, who listens to the thrum of Jean's heartbeat in one ear, and lighthearted grumbling through the other.
Eventually, Jean starts to rake both hands atop Marco's head, abandoning the comb altogether. Sighing, he looks first at an increasingly drowsy Marco, then to a stack of textbooks waiting by the stairs. It shouldn't be too difficult to keep Marco from walking home tonight.
Applying pressure to Marco's scalp, Jean takes his time in raking his fingernails from nape to temple, while gathering and gently pulling at tufts of soft, dark hair the entire way. He can feel Marco's body relax against him, and before long he's earned a tired hum of approval.
"Class in the morning?"
"Afternoon…"
"Will you let me give you a ride to work in the morning?"
"I have to go home at some point, too."
No you don't. "I'll take you."
"Thanks. It's fine, though."
Even through his exhaustion, Marco's voice carries an irritated note that causes Jean to concede. At least for now.
What Marco doesn't know, is that in Jean's attempt to keep himself on the insane end of busy, he's managed to save nearly enough cash to afford them a one-bedroom on campus—possibly even enough to cover up to half a year's rent. Such is the fortune of a young man on scholarship with limited interests and a family who so far has done their best to provide for most of his needs.
As for Jean, he's prepared to settle for the fact that he might never be fully balanced or happy in this life. What he demands of himself in compensation is to demonstrate the love he has for those who do bring him the occasional miracle of genuine happiness.
For now, he's content to not simply have reached the end of another day, but to be doing so with Marco feeling cared for and asleep in his arms.