Prompt #18, "i can't wait to hug you!" With Jeff/Albert of course? <3
jeffrey always went home for every break, insistent on spending as much time with his family as he could. he loves his parents, his siblings, the warm way the house felt overcrowded and always smelled sweet, like something was baking. it was the house he’d grown up in, full to the brim with sentimentality.
but he missed, too, the cramped apartment he shared with billy and walter and albert. he missed his friends, missed having a space of his own; charlie had taken his room once he’d moved out, and so he was stuck sharing with nathaniel.
he loved coming home to his family. but it always felt strange, too.
walter never answered calls, was hard to reach by text. billy was near incomprehensible and also busy, and not all that far away. it was albert that he found himself missing the most, for reasons that he didn’t want to examine too closely.
they trade texts on and off, jeffrey so glued to his phone that his mother needles him about a girlfriend, and then after a sharp, searching look, a boyfriend. jeffrey blushes and stammers, waving away her probing questions; no, mother, blissfully unattached. so he takes to sitting out on the back porch, wrapped in his coat and a blanket, cold, stiff fingers sliding across the screen of his phone.
“it’ll be good to go back,” jeff says one night to his computer screen, sprawled across the air mattress that had been put up for him in nathaniel’s room. albert smiles, slightly, the familiar backdrop of their tiny living room behind him. he had stayed over break, had nowhere else to go; jeffrey had desperately wanted to invite him home.
“family tiff?” albert asks, sounding sympathetic. “you can always come back early, y’know.”
“just crowded,” he sighs, propping his chin on his fist. briefly, he does allow himself to consider leaving, going back to the apartment and to albert, just the two of them until break ended. it was a nice dream. “i love daddy and mama and kids, but it’s hard to breathe sometimes, everyone bumpin’ shoulders. i almost tripped over fanny’s skates on the stairs, earlier.”
albert laughs at that, his eyes crinkling at the corners. he looked tired- must have been picking up extra shifts at the bar. something in jeff softens inexplicably at the sight of the faint shadows under albert’s eyes. he wants to sweep him up in his arms, take care of him, wrap him up and make sure he gets enough sleep; jeff knows that albert would never consent to such coddling, though, let alone from him.
“sounds like how it usually is around here,” albert says, and jeff makes a noise that may have been a snort. “it’s too quiet, without you here.”
you as in the three of them, but jeff drink it in, pretends that albert missed him specifically. he smiles and across the screen, albert echoes it, small and sweet, and jeff gathers it close to his chest.
