The first time Jericho met Leonard, he thought he was an angel. Standing over him like some righteous warrior of heaven, sun at his back and halo in his hair. Sometimes Jericho looked at him and thought he saw a piece of god in the devil.
But for a moment, watching the breeze drift through Leonard's gold hair and across his sun-soaked face, he could believe it again. He looks younger like this; asleep. Much younger. In fact, he looks like a teenager.
Jericho's eyes jump to the tiled ceiling, the yellow walls, the god-awful infirmary bed he's laying on. It feels like a brick. He feels like a brick. What in holy fuck.
His head begins to float, and he has to look down to ensure all his limbs are intact and connected. He sits up, pinches himself in the arm, and immediately regrets it.
There's a rustling when Leonard shifts awake, rubbing sleep from his eyes.
"Jerry," he grumbles. He looks like he's about to continue, but something on Jericho's face stops him. Leonard leans in, and Jericho stares back.
This is not the forty-some-year-old corporate leader he's grown used to, with the grey in his hair and crease in his brow. This is the seventeen-year-old high schooler he grew up with, who still has that spark in his eyes and the young recklessness of a fledgling. This feels like a stranger.
Questions pile on Jericho's tongue, clogging up his throat. The inside of his mouth feels like sandpaper and he's almost afraid that if he tries to talk, he'd only clack woodenly. He wonders if it shows on his face, and it must do, because he can't read Leonard's expression at all.
Leonard's voice is concerned - or at least he'd guess - when he asks "Jerry, you okay?"
Jericho can't help flinching back. "I think," He clears his throat. It doesn't do much. "I think I need to talk to the nurse."
. . .
Half an hour and a doctor's note later, he walks down the near-empty hallway, head still floating.
A mild concussion, she said, no rowdy sports or anything like that for a week and you should be fine. It doesn't help that Leonard is hovering at his shoulder as Jericho drifts through the corridor. Various programme posters and award-boasting frames cocoon the walls, but they start to blur into each other when he looks too closely.
It's an odd mood for 17:54 on a Tuesday in September. His beloved Blackberry phone confirms it. Just another Tuesday.
"I'm fine," he repeats for possibly the millionth time, "you fussing around me is just making me more disorientated. I just need some sleep."
Leonard looks angry enough to shriek, but apparently decides against it. Instead, he stops Jericho, pulls him close by both shoulders, and enunciates into his face the most scathing concern he'd ever felt.
"Jerry. You fell on your head, hard. You've been out for four hours. Your hat is scrapped." Leonard stares into his eyes like he's searching for something in them. "You are not fine." He doesn't seem to find it.
Jericho holds his hands out placatingly. Maybe, a long time ago (or is it really?) he would've been touched by it. Leonard was never this concerned in that strange vision-dream.
"Leo," he tries. He almost forgot how stubborn and dead-set Leonard could be. No, that was wrong. He forgot what a one-track-minded ox he'd always been.
Leonard snaps, "Don't 'Leo' me! You better not be at school tomorrow -"
"But you 'Jerry'd me," Jericho cuts in. Young-cub-Leonard has nothing on pride-elder-Leonard. "I feel fine, I swear. C'mon, captain, cut this old rat some slack."
At that, he seems to melt. Just slightly. "Look yourself in the mirror before you talk. You've got fucking bandages 'round your head," Leonard settles on.
Jericho grins sheepishly. Young-cub-Leonard. Practically a baby.
"But," Leonard's own grin flips on like some some ominous switch, " as your captain, I say you're banned from practice for at least a week. Now c'mon Number Four, let's get out of here."
"Oi," Jericho laughs when Leonard elbows him out of the door, "watch it!"
They fall into easy bickering as they make their way to Leonard's car along the sun-spotted pavement. Shrubs and trees line the footpath, letting the clear sky glitter through occasionally. Birdsong gilds the soft air. Jericho wonders if this is a dream; if he would even want to wake up.
He holds a shudder and returns the raised eyebrow Leonard sends his way. Leonard is much more observant than people give him credit for - than even Jericho gave him credit for - and he's already been suspicious enough when he woke up in the infirmary.
A wave of nostalgia washes over Jericho as the car doors shut and Leonard rolls down the windows. The early English autumn wasn't by any means hot, but the sunlight had baked the air freshener scent into Leonard's car interior.
The lengths you have to go to when your parents don't let you drive your open-roof sports car to school. Jericho snickers. Urgh.
He'd missed this. The comfortable silence, the carefree grins, the effortless trust; all of it.
"Hey, Jerry."
Jericho fights not to jump. "Hm?"
Leonard is staring into a red light when Jericho turns to face him. His ring glints as he taps his finger against the steering wheel in that familiar heartbeat staccato.
"What is it?" Jericho tries to ask gently, but what good is gentle when you're made of shards yourself?
Leonard looks at him then, and for a moment Jericho thinks he knows. He thinks he's going to ask. All the questions he can't answer and all the questions he has no answers to. Then Leonard turns back to the traffic and the moment is over.
"How d'you feel?" Leonard asks instead.
Jericho opts for a smile, even though he knows Leonard can't see it. "My head? That's fine." Then he grins, "But that test next week? Not so sure."
When Leonard laughs (barely, you just can't remember the last time he smiled), he counts it a small victory. He missed this.
By the time they pull up to the once-familiar gravel driveway, they fall back into gentle conversation. Dark clouds are creeping over the manicured hedges that they used to ruin their clothes in. Jericho tries not to stare at his childhood home. Leonard's face is impassive.
"Alright," Jericho steps out of the car, bag on his shoulder, but stops when he sees Leonard frowning down at his phone. "What's wrong?"
Leonard glances up through his blond fringe. "Date in fifteen," he sighs helplessly, and Jericho can see the message he's typing already. "Looks like I'll have to miss it." One side of his mouth quirks up in a smirk. "Rain check."
For a second, Jericho is furious - then he catches himself. He's seventeen, he remembers. They're both still seventeen. Leonard is not the remarried man with a reputation for infidelity. He isn't the absent father that Jericho knew anymore.
"Oh, come on Leo," he reaches into the car and pulls a distracted Leonard out, "that's like the second time this week. You can borrow one of my shirts or something -" he side-eyes the rumpled (and slightly bloodstained) polo uniform, "- and maybe you'll actually keep a girlfriend this time."
Leonard looks at him again, like he did in the car, but then breaks into a grin. "Aw, mummy Jerry," he teases, "so worried about my love life!" He mimes wiping a tear, almost knocking his hand on the doorway as they pass through, "I thought it was 'bros before hoes'!"
Also grinning, Jericho twirls an invisible moustache, "The distinguished gentleman," he pauses dramatically to set his bag down, "has a healthy balance of both hoes and bros in his life."
They continue bickering into Jericho's room, and Leonard takes a seat on his dishevelled bed as Jericho rifles through his wardrobe for something that could suit Leonard's warm golden complexion. Partly to hide whatever wrong-footed face he's pulling, partly to busy his hands. What are they looking for again?
His room is exactly as he remembers it and still nothing like he could have expected. Decently sized and moderately messy with a laundry-covered chair in the corner, trinkets strewn over his desk by the window, all the posters of his favourite artists - and some scantily-clad women - still covering the walls.
He snorts, head buried between cotton and tweed. Should've gotten a damn Oscar for his grand total of zero breakdowns.
"My sense of fashion is great, I'll have you know," the blond boy (and he really is still a boy) is arguing, "you don't need to pick out my clothes. I'm not a kid."
Jericho rolls his eyes, "Alright then, Mr Man-sir-adult," he twirls aside with a flourish, not quite managing graceful with an armful of hangers, "please do proceed!"
As predicted, Leonard steps up confidently - and promptly falters. Jericho didn't really expect him to be able to find any clothes that fit him; they might be of similar heights but Jericho could never gain the muscle that Leonard wears so easily, nor do the darker, cooler tones that Jericho favours suit Leonard. He'd look like he's going to a funeral. Besides, years of strict uniform policy don't make a fashion guru.
"See," Jericho quips triumphantly and pushes the armful of clothes he'd already selected into Leonard's chest, urging him towards the door. "Now go get changed like a good boy."
The sun flickers through a window and briefly sets gold hair aflame. Shit. Wrong move. Then Leonard moves, and Jericho can see how he scowls without weight.
"Oh, fuck off, " Leonard throws over a shoulder but still obeys. There's no doubt he'd flip him off without his arms occupied.
Rolling his eyes, Jericho turns back to his room. He stops. Takes a breath in, lets it fall out again.
It's empty. Of course it is, but it feels suddenly like a hollow ribcage, like a worn-smooth gravestone. Like a forgotten home.
Dust dances across the air on beams of light, and it seems like the non-movement is all that's alive in the room. It's still for another moment. He pads across the room and opens the windows. When the stagnant air leaves, it seems to tug free with it something from his chest, flying away into the blue and away into the clouds.
He stands there, for a while, taking in the tracks of his childhood. It could have been one minute. It could have been fifteen. It makes him feel almost silly, mourning himself. He's distinctly aware that nothing else has changed and, alone like this, he's not sure if he's ever outgrown the little boy who called this room his kingdom.
It's sobering.
"Xuanyu?"
Oh. Mother. Jericho whirls around to face her, a million questions on his tongue, but her eyes are smiling and he hasn't seen that for so long. He swallows them all down.
"Ma," he lies. "I didn't know you were home."
A/N: The title's a reference to Genesis 1:13 in the Bible (and there was evening, and there was morning) but spiced up.
I'm not religious myself, having sold my soul to the digital gods instead (read: Grammarly), but that particular sin of mine comes from plenty of mild religious trauma, so I do think I have a solid hill to die on.
