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The quake of a rough pocket of air is probably all that could’ve gotten Jonas to open his eyes after the day he’s had. It’s not only the drop of his stomach from being too high and too exposed that has him disoriented, but also the drastically different temperatures cocooning him. His left side is prickling with cold, his right is toasty, and the top of his head is fever-warm.
A glance over shows Jiuming is in much the same boat as him, blinking himself alert as he gets his arms under himself to sit up straight. From where he’d been tipping. Around Meiying and into Jonas. The reason his head’s so warm is definitely because it’d been pressed up against Jiuming’s. Before he has a chance to feel any way about that, however, Mac says, “It was a picture perfect moment.” His huge grin is perched above the phone he’s holding out for the both of them to see. Meiying is not at all fazed between them, still slumbering away.
And, well, as obnoxious as Mac is, he’s not exactly wrong. Meiying’s head is slumped down against Jonas’ chest and both Jonas and Jiuming have leaned in toward her, forming a tent above her with their upper bodies. And, sure enough, Jiuming’s temple is pressed against Jonas’ forehead and their shoulders are flush.
“It’s my new wallpaper,” Mac adds, snatching the phone back as though worried he or Jiuming will try to delete the evidence.
Jonas doesn’t think either of them have the wherewithal for sudden movements and, besides, it’s not that terrible a picture.
Jonas rubs at his forehead, purposefully not watching the water of the cage that Haiqi effectively used to pace, looking for (and succeeding in finding) a way out. If that whole thing right there doesn’t prove him right in every argument there is to have, then he doesn’t know what will. He also doesn’t know why he’s trying to reason with a man who thinks he could train a meg. Probably because it became obvious early on in his stewardship of Meiying that he and Jiuming work better with each other than against each other. It only took about a year of increasing hostilities to figure that out. “You’re not listening.”
Jiuming is ignoring him, grabbing a palm pad off his workstation and circling around behind his desk, proving Jonas’ point. He’s still staring at the screen as he settles, finger pointing in Jonas’ general direction. “I’m listening, I’m just not agreeing with you and,” he tilts his head in an almost-wince, “you tend to think those are the same thing.”
Jonas sighs, slumping further against the glass wall. “I know you’re not listening because my point is too reasonable for you to not realize you’re wrong.” He crosses his arms over his chest. “Meiying needs some normalcy—friends her own age, interests above water—you can’t disagree with that.”
That gets Jiuming’s attention and he actually looks up to focus on Jonas, perking an eyebrow. “You would rather deal with normal fourteen-year-old girl problems?” He sounds genuinely curious.
Jonas raises both eyebrows. “Rather than ‘she’s going to be eaten by a seventy-foot megalodon,’ yeah, I think I would.”
Jiuming grins. Jonas really hates when he does that. It makes it impossible to argue with him when it’s clear there’s nothing in the world that could ever get him down. “Makeup? Sneaking out? Rebelling against us? Chasing boys? Girls? Neither? Either? That’s what you want for us? We can handle the shark, the rest…” He waggles his hand back and forth as if to say so-so. When Jonas doesn’t bite, he drops the grin and sighs too. “She was born to do this, why not let her?”
“We’re not giving her the opportunity to form other interests. Maybe this is what she wants but, I’m pretty sure to know that,” he pulls a face and he’s trying not to be sarcastic, he really is, but it’s hard when that’s his baseline, especially with Jiuming, “we have to give her choices. Not choice.”
Jiuming is still, taking that in, which is a dead giveaway that not only is he listening, but Jonas has actually landed a solid hit and he tells himself to be patient while the man recovers from the blow because that’s only polite. Then Jiuming cocks his head and says, “Sorry, I couldn’t understand your accent there.”
It breaks all of the tension, not just from this conversation but from all the ones preceding it and Jonas hates how wide his smile wants to be. He tries to bite down on it but a good thirty percent of it still breaks through, even as he says, “Fuck you.”
Jiuming is smiling now too and he gets up from his desk, comes up to the other side of the window and mirrors Jonas’ posture. “Let’s table it,” he offers, “until tomorrow.”
It’s not exactly the answer he wants but Jiuming doesn’t placate him. If he’s asking for time, it’s because he actually intends to use it and Jonas can extend him that.
They discuss it well into the next night and considering Jonas was up at six with Mac to watch surveillance footage and then spent four hours with DJ deciding what to do with said footage and where it could be most effectively utilized, he’s wiped out. He drags his feet out of Jiuming’s office and turns around to offer some parting shot when he’s interrupted with: “Are you going to walk all the way back across the Institute?”
He doesn’t even consider it because, obviously, the answer is no and Jiuming is already leaning towards his own bedroom door right next to his office, an unconscious invitation that Jonas has no desire to decline.
“I’m really not,” he agrees.
It’s not the first time that they’ve fallen asleep in the same space, only a few months before had been the whole mess with the megs and passing out on the helicopter together, and before that had been what felt like endless late nights deciding their arrangement with Meiying. A tense series of conversations that usually ended up with them asleep in separate corners of Juiming’s workstation since Jonas’ rooms were so far away. Because it had only been wise then that he and Jiuming were relegated to opposite ends of the Oceanic Institute, back when their relationship had been nothing but contention and willful misconstruing.
Suyin had given Jonas parental rights, figuring he had spent four years as Meiying’s pseudo-father whereas she’d never even met her uncle. That didn’t make it any easier when he showed up in their lives with blood ties and an assumption and Jonas had had to explain to this stranger why, actually, he didn’t have any say here.
Luckily, they’d both learned to cede a little ground. And Jonas likes to think not only are they both better for it, so is Meiying.
Still, this is something new. Not only is this them sleeping together purposefully, it also involves a bed. Jonas is too exhausted to register much of that at all though. He just follows Jiuming with a yawn, pulls his shirt up over his head by the back hem, kicks off his sliders, and shuffles out of his shorts before collapsing face first on the enormous bed essentially the second he’s in the room.
He vaguely hears Jiuming head off in the direction of the bathroom but he’s deeply asleep before he leaves it.
He wakes to softness, unfamiliar scents, and something jabbing him in the chest. He catches it before whatever-it-is can poke him for a fifth time (that he knows of) and opens his eyes to find he’s holding Jiuming’s fist, the man above it eyeing him critically.
“You could be softer,” he says, unapologetic, his voice an unfamiliar rasp this early in the morning, “less muscle,” he adds, “more fluff.” His cheek is a dark red and Jonas squints an eye down at his own chest to see a patch of skin on it that nearly matches that same size, if not the shade. His is a little pinker. Looks like they ended up pressed together again.
Jiuming yawns hugely and eyes Jonas’ chest like it’s betrayed him by not being cozier.
“Muscle helps me run fast,” Jonas can’t help but point out, voice even more deadpan than usual. “Swim faster.”
“Touche,” Jiuming allows after a minute or so of contemplation. After another minute, he rolls halfway away and stretches. He twists back to look at Jonas now that he’s sitting up. “Despite not channeling a pillow well at all,” he squints, “very poorly done, zero out of ten, I would say that’s the best sleep I’ve had since….” he frowns, searching for it and seems surprised to land at: “since I was a kid.”
Jonas can’t deny he’s feeling unprecedentedly well-rested too. “Maybe we should argue ourselves into total exhaustion more often?”
Jiuming stares at him for a long moment and Jonas can tell from just the look on his face that the topic has shifted. It’s one of the things they’ve gotten good at. Not just communicating, but not needing words to do it. At first, because Jiuming regularly slid back into Mandarin, which for years Jonas couldn’t understand a lick of, and then because they were less likely to be argued with if their parenting was done subvocally. He sighs, shoulders slumping, and says, “We can try it,” and Jonas knows he’s talking about Meiying going to school with other kids her age, getting out of her—hell, their—underwater bubble. It’s not something he really needed to give Jiuming a vote on but it’s nice, not to have to do this all by himself, to parent with a partner and have his decisions get peer-reviewed. “Part-time,” Jiuming adds, before Jonas’ smile can get too wide. “I still want her here with us most of the week.”
Jonas huffs, rolling his eyes, mutters, “Can’t deny you’re rich enough to make that work.”
“Jonas,” Jiuming says, turning around to look him right in the eyes, letting the silence grow heavy before he breaks it with: “we’re rich enough.”
Jonas whacks him in the face with a pillow, grinning. “Idiot.”
Jonas is trying not to vibrate out of his skin, something he’s not hiding well as he paces back and forth, taps his pointer finger relentlessly on his forearm and swallows down everything that wants to be a shout. Which is every thought he has right now.
Meiying watches him with a knowing smile that is all patience. “I know what I’m doing,” she says.
Jonas snorts, cutting a glance over Jiuming’s way. He’s grinning like an idiot, of course. “You get that from your uncle,” he accuses, though he has to amend, “And your mother.”
Jiuming walks over and claps him on the back while Meiying’s face goes soft. “Yeah, but she probably does,” he says.
Jonas hates that having him so close makes him less antsy. It shouldn’t; this is still just as insane as it was a minute ago but now at least they feel like a united front even if they aren’t one. Jonas bares his teeth at Jiuming, glaring. “She doesn’t have a license to drive and we’re letting her dive through the thermocline, alone.” These are reasonable concerns. Reasonable. He hates that they’re both staring at him like he’s the one being ridiculous.
But he had agreed to this. He tries to hold on to that. Meiying had agreed to give school a real try if he agreed to this. And not only had she held to her end, but she was thriving there. She had friends her own age and subjects that had nothing to do with underwater exploration that she loved, everything that Jonas had hoped for her and in exchange for that he was letting her do something so incredibly reckless he wanted to revoke his parent card entirely.
Jiuming’s hand is back on his shoulder as though he can hear his every thought. He probably can; he’s annoying like that. He nods towards Meiying. “So she can beat our time up and back and you can rightfully hand over your World’s Greatest Grandma mug.”
“Why’d I let you talk me into this?” he groans.
Because it had been Jiuming joining Meiying’s side that he couldn’t resist. He could shoot down a fourteen-year-old genius, a man in charge of a billion-dollar institute not so much. Jiuming shrugs. “I know big words and wear polo shirts. I’m a respectable businessman,” he straightens the collar of his current polo shirt, “it’s only natural I can outflank you in conversation.”
Jonas gives him an unimpressed look and says, “I know you are but what am I?”
Jiuming grins and squeezes his grip on Jonas’ shoulder. “She’s fine,” he says softly as Meiying straps herself in, smiling hugely and looking more like her uncle than ever. She gives them a thumbs up before they’re only watching her on monitors.
When she excitedly shouts—what feels like directly into Jonas’ ear—“Three minutes and thirty-seven seconds to spare!” it startles him so badly that he nearly whacks Jiuming in the jaw with his forehead. Because apparently he’d fallen into a very restive sleep while waiting, and directly on Jiuming’s shoulder. Jiuming looks too alert to’ve been asleep too and that’s confirmed when he manages a smug, “Told you so,” in unison with Meiying.
Yeah, yeah. He really liked that damn mug too.
“None of it’s incontrovertible proof that Nascent brass knew what the Nascent minions were doing and, without that…” Jonas hates not only how defeated he sounds, but how defeated he is. He and Mac have been on this case for three weeks and while there’s plenty of proof—photographic, written, hell, even testified to on the lower level—there’s nothing that can topple the bad actors at the top of the food chain. And until that happens, Nascent is going to keep destroying protected reefs and poisoning marine life.
It’s why he’s brought in the extra set of eyes.
“There are an unfortunate number of boxes here,” Jiuming points out, “that we have yet to even touch,” he frowns, trying to catch Jonas’ eye, “optimism wouldn’t kill you.”
“Maybe not,” Jonas snarks back, “but it would give you so little to do then.” It’s a little meaner than he usually is but Jiuming takes it in stride. It’s not something Suyin would’ve done, she would’ve attacked when he was low as, just because he’s low, that doesn’t mean he gets to lash out. She wouldn’t have been wrong to do it either. But Jiuming lets it slide past without comment, knowing that even if it’s leveled in his direction, it’s not targeted, not pointed.
He might bring it up later but he won’t make Jonas feel worse than he already does right now. He misses Suyin but he loves that he still has people who know his faults and accept them, even if it’s differently than how it was done before. And having been that biting, it’s defused him and instead of doubling down, he just knocks the lid off the next box and starts reading.
There’s no further comment as Jiuming does exactly the same.
He wakes to a mug of burnt coffee in his face—Jiuming prefers tea and had only even gotten the coffee machine to pacify Jonas. Jonas still doesn’t know how he manages to burn it. In fact, before Jiuming, he would’ve said it was impossible. Now he knows better: Jiuming and impossible don’t belong in the same universe, let alone the same sentence. “Good morning,” Jiuming says, disgustingly cheery, and even before he says it, Jonas knows what must’ve happened. “I found something.”
And of course he did. Optimists gonna optimize or however that goes.
Jiuming rolls his eyes, refusing to participate in Jonas’ catastrophizing. Jonas doesn’t think it’s some moral stand as much as he’s just not very good at it. Even at his worst, he can’t help sprinkling in silver linings. Jiuming places a tumbler of amber liquid in Jonas’ hand and clinks his own against it. “She’s going to school, she’s getting ready for a sleepover, and she doesn’t hate us.” He tips his own drink back and raises his eyebrows towards Jonas’. “Celebrate the win, Jonas.”
Jonas sighs, hating to admit the man maybe has a point.
Another few fingers, okay a fist, okay two fists worth of fuck-yourself-expensive whiskey and Jonas not only can no longer worry, he also can’t really walk.
“Staying?” Jiuming slurs at him and Jonas is uncertain whether he means on this particular patch of floor or in Jiuming’s room.
Either way: “Yeah.” He’s not sure how, or when, he manages to crawl over to the bed but he does know he doesn’t manage to divest himself of anything until much later, around three a.m., when he wakes up hot and spinny.
Jiuming only manages to groan, “Stop rocking everything,” before they’re both passed out once again. When he next opens his eyes, it’s to praise himself for the brilliant idea of living underwater as there is no brutal slice of sunlight screeching directly into his eyeballs that morning and he’s just wondering what woke him when a chirpy voice says, “I’m back and bothering you because Jonas must already be—”
Meiying? Jonas sits up, his limbs all feeling remarkably heavy. While he’d known Meiying was getting a ride from Sonya’s mom, he also thought she wasn’t coming back until early afternoon, which means either her plans have changed or it’s much later than he thought.
“Oh my God.” She says each word like it’s its own sentence and it is far too early for this. Only apparently not as early as he thought. He’s about to tell her as much when she breaks his brain open with a loud and high-pitched, “Finally!”
“Meiying,” comes an admonishing grumble around Jonas’ hip, which is when he finally assesses the scene as Meiying clearly has.
He’s half-naked in Jiuming’s room, in Jiuming’s bed, with Jiuming clinging to him like a teddy bear. Only he’s recently gotten a crash course on how not-soft he is so maybe more like a life-size He-Man figurine with less hair? Jiuming’s arm is around his waist right where the comforter meets his stomach so even if he weren’t covered, it would be impossible to tell Jonas is in boxer-briefs, propriety still intact. Jiuming’s forehead is also nestled right above Jonas’ hip, which means he’s too far under the covers for it to be clear that he is also wearing some clothes.
Before Jonas can try to clarify any of this, Meiying says, “I was going to hit you both over the head with a sturgeon or some other good whacking fish just to see if I could maybe knock some sense into you,” and she’s grinning so brilliantly that Jonas has to close his mouth, feeling strangely guilty, while her eyes flash between them with all the love and joy a fourteen-year-old girl has in her heart (and he’s been to a BTS concert, he knows exactly how much that is), “but you got there on your own! I knew you would,” she frowns and Jonas thinks now, say it now, but Meiying keeps going before he can, “Well, actually, I doubted you completely but this is one time I’m glad to be wrong!” She’s practically dancing, her heels keep leaving the floor as though she could float on this happiness alone and Jonas has no idea what to do and she’s still near-floating even as she grumbles, “Except for the fact I owe Mac fifteen hundred yuan now,” on her way out.
Jonas feels like the world’s worst sack of crap, and not just because of the hangover, and he can’t look at Jiuming. He feels him shuffle away and after a long, long time, he finally says, “That’s going to be bad.”
“Yes,” Jonas says, dropping his head into his hands. “Yes, it is.”
Mac has just bought them a round with his winnings when Jonas finally asks the question he’s been trying to ask for a full six days (while avoiding Meiying), “You really thought Jiuming and I…” And he can’t get any farther with that. It’s too absurd for words.
Luckily, Mac doesn’t need him to. “Mate, you didn’t?” Mac takes a swig of his shitty beer, complete disbelief etched into his features. It’s not really that bad, the beer, it’s just that Jonas lives with Jiuming who has money and the best taste in everything and like John Hammond spares no expense (and like John Hammond is probably going to be brutally murdered by the prehistoric beasts he loves, which Jonas has been pushing down nearly since he met the man). Also, there’s nothing he seems to love more than sharing the things that he loves, craves, wants with Jonas. Mac winces, like he doesn’t know how to break this news. “He’s kind of your husband.”
“He’s not.” It’s knee-jerk. Sure, there had been that embarrassing moment when they’d signed Meiying up for school, and that woman who’d started at the lab and just assumed, and Curtis—before that had been a moot point—who’d cornered him alone and asked, ‘I’m really not getting in the middle of anything there, if I…’ and even after Jonas’ unequivocal no had looked at him like he was lying.
“You’re not co-parenting Meiying then?” They were, but only because it had made their relationship a lot less fractious and there had been nothing they were so opposed on that they couldn’t make that work. “You’re not sharing every milestone in each other’s lives together?” They were but Jonas was doing that with Mac too, only as soon as he thinks it, he has to adjust that ever so slightly. Because, yeah, he told Mac everything of import but when it was something that required a plus one and wasn’t kid-friendly, Jonas just assumed Jiuming would be at his side. And he was. He didn’t think they’d ever even discussed it. And the reverse was true too. Mac tips his beer bottle towards Jonas, the answer to his last question already written all over his face. “You’re not at all intimate? Not even a little?”
No. That one Jonas knows is a no. Except.
They’d been falling asleep together more often, which Jonas can admit he hasn’t exactly been fighting since he doesn’t think he’s ever slept so well in his life. There’s that thing he does too, that Suyin, that even Lori, had never been able to stop him from doing—running himself into the ground to solve a problem, but all he needs is Jiuming’s hand on his shoulder to know it’s time to take a break. There’s the easy shorthand they have about not just Meiying, but in life or death situations too, an understanding that he knows this man so well, and trusts this man so much that they don’t need more than a gesture between them.
Jiuming has him, every part of him, and like the adult he is he pushes that revelation away before it can settle into his foundations and rewrite the very way he’s built.
They’re partners and they work now, don’t they? They don’t need to be any more than they already are and Jonas doesn’t need to fuck any of this up with feelings.
He pointedly doesn’t expect to be Jiuming’s, well, date for lack of a better word at the next fundraiser. When Jiuming says, “We should get going,” just assuming, the way Jonas would’ve just kept on assuming, Jonas takes a deep, calming breath and says, “You go, I’ll…” he stops himself from saying, ‘meet you there,’ because then he still sounds like his damn date and finishes, “be around.”
Jiuming stutters to a complete halt, his fingers pausing on his cufflink, and his eyes slowly come up to meet Jonas’. “You’re not going?” he says carefully.
“No, no,” Jonas confirms, swallowing, “I’m going.” God, why is this so fucking hard? Why can’t he say, ‘I’m going, I just don’t know how to be your date to this and not want to go home with you, get into bed with you, fuck that stupid, infuriating, wonderful grin onto your face all night long, and then wake up with you in the morning? And even though I could do all that last month, I can’t now?’
Jiuming’s motion resumes and he drops the cufflink. It rolls off the edge of his desk. He doesn’t so much as glance at it. “I see,” he says and Jonas doubts he really does but at least he’s not pushing. Jiuming’s gaze when he looks back is careful and Jonas hates it. This is a man who doesn’t know how to be careful, who makes reckless into a swimming-with-megs artform. Even when they’d just met and Jonas held all the cards when it came to Meiying, Jiuming had still never tried to be palatable or anything other than what he was with Jonas. “Did you have that talk with Meiying?”
He’s fishing, wondering at this change in attitude. Does Meiying need clearer boundaries between them so she understands what they’re not? But Jonas has been going for completely out of character on that actually and behaving the absolute coward when it comes to that whole thing. Not only has he not corrected Meiying’s assumption, but any time the subject comes up (or might come up) he aggressively changes it. He’s barely ready to think about this, let alone talk about it.
Instead of telling Jiuming any of that, he just says, “No.”
Jiuming frowns in incomprehension but he can’t ask. That’s not something they do, not when this whole thing between them has evolved without words. They can’t try to use them now because the question would be: then why aren’t we doing this together? And then it’s all too clear why everyone around them thought they were.
He dithers around the entrance, making sure he misses both Jiuming and Meiying, who would each have their own questions. Jiuming’s likely silent and Meiying’s accusing and both completely unanswerable when Caihong finds him at the door, slides an arm through his crooked elbow and uses him as a stand to fix the strap on her heel. “I hate these things,” she says, dark hair curtaining her face.
The distraction from his own thoughts is more than welcome and Jonas smirks. “You love talking about research.”
She stands back up and glares at him. “To researchers, aka people I don’t have to stop and explain the definition of every second word to. You’ll notice I don’t really talk to you,” Jonas laughs despite himself because even though he’s sure she’s not kidding, that also doesn’t make it not funny. She keeps her arm laced through his and says, “Okay, you’re going in with me. If I have you then I have a distraction, you’re like a human smoke bomb.”
“I think it’s ‘smoke show,’ but I’ll take it.” He grins to let her know he’s joking and she rolls her eyes at him.
“Okay, The Great Jonas Taylor, are you ready to do this? You be,” she gestures vaguely at him, “and I’ll be nearby shoving all the cheese I can find into my mouth. If it looks like someone is going to try to talk to me, say something like ‘aah, big fuck-off sharks,’ and distract them. Got it?”
He shrugs his shoulders. “I mean it’s my regular schtick so.”
She gives him a thumbs up and he never even ends up having to say his vocal smoke bomb, ‘aah, big fuck-off sharks,’ (though he’s prepared to) because hardly anyone looks at Caihong with him there. Since that seems to be exactly what she wants though, he can feel good rather than terrible about that.
Of course that only lasts until Jiuming finds him. “You came with a date,” he says and Jonas can’t read his tone at all. He’s still not wearing a cufflink on his left arm and Jonas wants to press his thumb into the delicate veins on the underside of his wrist.
Still, he tries to play it cool. Adjusts the collar of his suit. “A date bamboozled me at the door, actually.”
Jiuming’s eyes don’t leave Jonas to say, “She’s pretty.”
Jonas has absolutely no idea what to do with that and settles on: “Astute of you.” They both know Caihong, Jiuming better than him actually, and yet Jiuming is pretending he doesn’t, pretending she’s an archetype rather than a person. Jonas tells himself that can’t mean what he thinks it means.
Jiuming pretty quickly torpedoes that thought though.
“I realize now we’ve been doing this all backwards,” he says, looking down at his uncuffed sleeve, “so it’s somehow snuck up on me.”
Jonas is pretty sure his swallow is audible. “What’s that?”
Jiuming looks up at him, dark eyes steady and unblinking. “That we’re already in a relationship.” Finally, finally, his mouth curves up into that familiar shape. “Which makes it pretty rude of you to show up with a date in front of your significant other.”
“You can’t accidentally stumble into a relationship, Jiuming,” Jonas feels compelled to point out because if he can talk Jiuming out of this then he absolutely wants to. Because he definitely can’t be, there’s no going back for him and he only wants this if Jiuming is just as fucking stuck as he is.
Luckily, the smile stays. The grin grows and he presses himself to Jonas’ side, shoulder to shoulder. “We are incontrovertible proof that is false.” He glances back around them, asks with faux-solemnity, “Shall I go find a date then? Bring her back to my bed tonight? Maybe it gets serious, maybe she weighs in on Meiying’s future?”
And if there had been any doubt in Jonas before, there wouldn’t be now. His fist clenches entirely despite himself. Jiuming grins even wider when he sees that and Jonas gives him an exasperated look that is one hundred percent meant for both of them. “How’d we get married without having a single date?”
Jiuming brushes imaginary dirt off Jonas’ shoulder. “We are extraordinary men, Jonas.” He waggles his eyebrows. “Ditch the date, come to my room tonight.”
Once Jonas is sure he’s not completely tongue-tied, he tuts. “Forward.”
Jiuming tilts his head. “We’ve essentially been husbands for two years. Is it?”
Jonas considers, reevaluates. “Glacial.”
Jiuming hums a sound of agreement and whispers, “Let’s fix that,” before leaning forward, sealing a hand over Jonas’ heart, and brushing their lips together. His teeth tease at a bite over his lower lip—because of course they do—and then his tongue is slipping past Jonas’ defenses, sliding against his own, and it’s intimate and damning and quick, maybe twenty seconds, and when he pulls away, Jonas quite literally stumbles after him.
He can hear Mac yell from somewhere across the hall, “Get a room!” and Meiying’s immediate follow-up, “Yeah, Uncles! Jonas’ is bigger than mine and I’m stealing it!”