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Jamie recovers first, or at least manages to get himself moving to help corral escaped candy. His head is still spinning, too stunned to process this impossible new information, but some instinctive autopilot has kicked in and turned him back into a functioning human.
More or less.
He's acutely aware of Victor belatedly joining the fray, though at this point the rescue attempt is hopeless. The mudroom floor is nowhere near clean enough to salvage fallen food, and only two buckeyes have managed to stay inside the bowl. Jamie would feel guilty for being the reason so much time and effort have gone to waste, if he weren't so busy reeling for completely different reasons.
At least everyone seems inclined to laugh off the disaster instead of getting angry at him. Whether it's because everyone's still caught up in more jovial spirits—or because May is so damn cute in her unsuccessful efforts to eat the candies before the adults can pry them out of her hands—the overall mood stays cheerful.
Somewhere along the way, someone gives May the two sweets that didn't land on the floor, and by the time they're gone her face and hands are smeared with chocolate.
"Don't worry about it, Jamie." Claudia says the words just for him, under her breath and soft with laughter. She gives his shoulder a squeeze as Lou and Warren pile the last of the fallen buckeyes back into the bowl. "Plenty of time to make more before Christmas Eve."
"Yeah." Jamie wipes his hands on his jeans and pushes to his feet. "Still. I'm sorry. I'll go buy the stuff tomorrow."
He barely registers that Warren is speaking, as his dad first introduces the chocolate-bedecked three-year-old, then adds, "My daughter Claudia, and her lovely wife Lou."
Jamie's heart gives a noticeable stumble when everyone's attention shifts to him and Warren says, "This is my son, Jamie."
His breath catches in his throat and he freezes again, wondering how Victor is going to respond. Surely Jamie's heart is racing so loud the whole neighborhood can hear it. Surely their mutual mortification will tip everyone off that something has gone awry.
Then Victor smiles, and the expression seems honest, if a little strained.
"Glad to meet you, Jamie. I hope we can be friends." Victor's grip is strong when Jamie accepts the man's offered handshake. He meets those drowning-deep eyes and wonders if anyone else notices the way Victor's voice hitches on the word 'friends'.
Victor. Not Sam. Jamie's brain catches and spins out, and he suddenly can't decide whether he feels more betrayed or confused through the stunned haze. What the hell is he going to do?
There's no chance to hold the handshake too long, even if Jamie wanted to, since everyone quickly bursts back into motion. There's still a car full of gifts and luggage to unpack, rooms to settle into, a cozy dinner to prepare. Jamie leaves his own bags at the base of the stairs in favor of helping unload Claudia's car—swapping out to entertain May for a while when it's time for the heaviest items that are quite frankly not his problem. He'd rather play with a three-year-old anyway, and considering how long it's been since he saw her in person rather than through a phone or computer screen, he's heartened at how quickly she warms to chasing him around the living room.
The whole house is exactly as noisy and chaotic as Jamie needs to distract himself from the disbelieving maelstrom of his thoughts. Buried at the core of the storm is a disappointment he does not dare examine. It's a little too close to heartbreak, and Jamie refuses to be heartbroken over a man he met yesterday and had no reasonable expectation of ever seeing again. The fact that Sam is Victor—is Warren Phipps's longtime best friend—shouldn't change anything.
But god damn it, it does. Instead of spending the evening sending flirtatious texts to a gorgeous stranger who's vanished to fuck knows where, Jamie has to watch Victor from across the room, knowing there won't be a repeat of the intimacy they shared last night.
With all the energetic disorder of the evening, dinner doesn't happen until almost eight o'clock. Even this is chaotic, albeit an order of magnitude less so than the hours leading up to it. May refuses to remain at the table, having already been fed at a more reasonable hour, which leaves the adults—including Victor—taking turns away from their own dinners to distract her, so that everyone else can eat in peace. By the time everyone manages to finish, it's later still. Past nine o'clock, and Claudia's upstairs trying to get a fussy and overstimulated three-year-old to sleep, while everyone else helps clear the table and pack up leftovers.
Jamie runs away the second the last plate is clean and dry, clumsily turning down Anika's offer to heat up some cider if people want to go sit by the fireplace. She looks at him with startled curiosity.
"Too much driving," he says, before she can start reading god-knows-what into his expression. "If I get anywhere near that fireplace, I'll fall asleep for sure."
"You know we wouldn't be offended, love."
"Yeah." He gives her a cautious smile, and then a more decisive hug. "But I'd rather be in pajamas and a warm bed. I'll see you in the morning, okay?" It's the most dishonest thing he's said to her in years. Jamie has no intention of changing into pajamas. There's too much restless energy beneath his skin. He can't imagine sitting still in his parents' company right now, no matter how delighted he is to see them. All he wants—to a disorienting and powerful degree—is to talk to Victor Leone. Alone. And if he can't have that, he needs to hide himself away and build his defenses up, so that he's better equipped to face tomorrow without giving the entire game away.
He hugs his dad too, and then Lou on his way toward the stairs. Claudia still hasn't emerged from doing battle with May's bedtime, and Victor has disappeared somewhere, saving Jamie from the quandary of what might constitute an appropriate goodnight for a man his family doesn't know he slept with.
Jamie's bags are gone from the base of the stairs, and he's not surprised to step into his old room and discover someone has deposited them just inside the door. The space has been redecorated over the past couple years, making it a pleasant but generic guest room, and for this Jamie is genuinely grateful. Any nostalgia he might harbor is undercut by how strange he feels in his own skin. He doesn't think he could cope with returning to his childhood bedroom, when his entire brain is caught and repeatedly tripping over the contradiction between Victor Leone's presence and the things Jamie wants to do to him.
Better like this, an almost anonymous space that's more like a fancy bed-and-breakfast than a reminder of being a kid. The blue walls have been painted over with a pale moss green, and all the oak furniture complements the color, even the narrow bed with its deep emerald comforter. The carpet is long gone, revealing smooth wooden flooring several shades lighter than the bureau and bedposts, and the old window—looking out across a wide backyard—has been replaced to keep out the draft.
It's an inviting space. And Jamie doesn't know what to do with himself now that he's standing in it.
He unpacks his clothing into the enormous bureau, settling in for a long stay. He lays out his softest pair of pajamas, but doesn't change into them. Even after sneaking across the hall to brush his teeth, he doesn't undress when he returns. Soon everyone else will turn in, and he's ready. Waiting. Listening for the sound of footsteps in the hall, to tell him when Victor has finally come upstairs, because Jamie is fully prepared to knock on his door and demand some answers.
Lou shuffles past first, her bare feet quiet on the steps—just below Jamie's door—and on the wood-paneled hallway disappearing to the opposite end of the house. Claudia must've texted her the all-clear after finally getting May to sleep. Then, after an eon, a heavier tread of footsteps climbs the stairs.
That can only be Victor. Neither of Jamie's parents has any reason to come upstairs tonight, when the master bedroom is on the ground floor at the back of the house. Which means Jamie's racing heart finally has something to focus on, as he listens to the steady progress and waits for Victor's steps to vanish into the second guest room along the hall.
But the heavy footsteps stop directly in front of Jamie's door. And he has just enough time to brace himself before a soft rap of knuckles breaks the impatient quiet.
Jamie crosses the room in an instant, opening the door to let Victor hurry inside, closing it again with a click.
There's restlessness in the way Victor strides across the room, as though trying to put a respectable distance between himself and Jamie. Gone is the calm facade he's worn all evening, replaced by tension in those broad shoulders and a visible clench of his jaw. He stands by the window without bothering to glance out at the moonlit ice and snow in the yard below.
Jamie doesn't want to admit how reassuring it is to see Victor like this. Unsteady. Unsure. Every bit as off-balance as Jamie has felt since arriving home.
"I'm so sorry, Jamie. I swear I had no idea." Victor's voice rumbles with feeling, and it's obvious he's trying to keep his voice down for the sake of discretion. He stares at Jamie with an expression that could mean so many things. Disbelief, guilt, horror, disappointment. Maybe all those things and more, and Jamie's heart threatens to break all over again.
He doesn't want Victor to feel guilty about being with him.
Jamie's not sure what alternative he can offer. He's certainly been entertaining his own cycle of panic since realizing who Victor is. But he can't bring himself to regret last night, no matter how awkward and strange it all seems in retrospect.
Mostly, he realizes with a shaky jolt, he just wants Victor to not be Warren's best friend. That would be a fantastic place to start.
Jamie belatedly takes his hand off the doorknob, but he keeps to his side of the room. Selfish instinct urges him to follow Victor and eradicate this unwelcome gulf between them. But he doesn't dare. His hands still want too desperately to reach out and hold on. Better to stay right where he is.
"You said your name was Sam!" Jamie hisses, barely above a whisper.
"There were three Victors on base, including me. I started going by my middle name almost a decade ago. I swear I wasn't trying to con you." Victor offers a helpless shrug, hands open at his sides. "I just didn't think about it."
The simplicity of this reasoning takes the wind out of Jamie's sails, and for a long moment he just stands there absorbing the information. Only as the anger melts away does he register just how hurt he was at the thought of Sam—Victor—lying to him last night. It's a powerful relief, to realize it was a careless misunderstanding and not a conscious deception, even if the rest of their situation remains an unmitigated disaster.
"Do you... want me to keep calling you Sam?" Jamie asks carefully.
Victor's shoulders slump. "No. I need to get used to Victor again. It's my name, I always meant to reclaim it eventually." His mouth twitches down at one corner, a pained little twist as he adds, "Besides, if you start calling me Sam, your folks will ask why. I don't think that's a conversation we want to have."
Jamie flinches at the notion. "No. Definitely not."
"I'm sorry," Victor says softly. "I planned to stay in touch, but I sure as hell didn't intend for it to happen like this."
The words draw Jamie a halting step forward. "You planned to stay in touch?"
This shouldn't surprise him. They exchanged phone numbers. They've texted each other multiple times today. Before he walked into his parents' house, Jamie was starting to genuinely hope there was some chance of keeping Sam in his life, distance be damned. He shouldn't be this relieved to learn Victor was thinking the same.
As though somehow following this careening mess of thoughts, Victor's expression shifts and he says, "Of course I planned to stay in touch. Only a fool lets go of a good thing without fighting for it."
A good thing. Jamie's stomach flips, and his chest twists tight and hot. He hates this. He hates that Victor is right. They had a good thing, and it doesn't matter. How are they supposed to fight for any piece of this, now that they know the truth?
They can't. That's the shitty and relentless reality of their situation. They can't have this.
"I know," Victor agrees miserably, deciphering Jamie's glower.
"This sucks," Jamie says. God, he can't even bring himself to wish it hadn't happened. Maybe it would be less torturous if he didn't know what he was losing, but he can't stand the thought of never having Victor at all.
"Yeah." Victor swallows hard and wrenches his gaze away, breaking eye contact with a jolt that feels like it could shatter them both. "I'm sorry. I wish..."
"Me too." Jamie hates that this is where they have to leave things, but he's not going to beg for something that will put Victor in an impossible position. Any connection between them—any revisiting of the intimacy they shared last night—would fuck things up with his dad for sure. It would be messy and complicated at best, and there's no way Jamie's family would understand. Feelings would be hurt. Friendships would be devastated, maybe beyond repair.
One night of sex—even really good sex—can't be worth that kind of collateral damage.
A yearning ache burns in the stillness between them. Jamie shivers and lets his gaze drift to the floor. He needs to let this go. He will let this go. But the disappointment hurts just the same.
It's Victor who stirs first from their silent impasse, and he moves past Jamie with reluctant steps. Sets his hand to the door without actually turning the knob. Hesitates there, almost within reach.
"Hey," Jamie says. He draws a steadying breath and eases closer. "It was nice. You don't have to be sorry about last night."
Then, emboldened by the way Victor sways toward him instead of away, Jamie leans in and kisses him on the cheek. If the kiss lingers a little longer than is strictly decent, so what? No one's here to call them out. Jamie needs this, if he has any hope of treating this conversation like a goodbye.
Yes, Victor will be living in the room immediately next-door to Jamie's. Yes, they'll be cohabiting for a full month, until Jamie goes back to Spokane, or Victor sorts out the housing market, whichever comes first. But starting over as strangers will mean a whole different landscape to the path that brought them here. Jamie is not allowed to want Victor. If he's going to have any hope of moving on, of retroactively sorting this gorgeous man into a box labeled Off Limits, then first he needs to acknowledge the fleeting intimacy they've already shared.
Jamie inhales sharply when Victor catches his hand and presses a kiss to his palm. Quick and rueful and over far too soon.
By the time Jamie gathers himself, Victor has already vanished into the hall—closing the door between them and leaving Jamie bereft.