He let his arm settle against Kieran, with a huff of laughter at his grin. It was – difficult to be angry about this, considering.

“Well,” Jude protested – in his defence – “how was I supposed to know if you were staring in a good way or in an ‘are you serious?’ way?” In truth, he probably should have figured it out eventually that it couldn’t just be the latter. Kieran had known him long enough to be well aware that Jude was serious about everything.

(On the other hand – and, given how obvious this was, he didn’t point it out, except in a slight twitch at the corner of his mouth – the only way Jude could have noticed something like that was if he had been staring back at Kieran all those times, so. They were both at fault, perhaps.)

“I wish you’d just told me,” he added, sleepily. When he thought they could have had all this... “We’ve wasted so much time.”

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