He cleared his throat—Jasper blinked up at him, and Will just glanced over as if he’d known Jack was there all along.

“Hi, Jasper.”

“Hello, Mr. Gardner.” He held out his hand, earbud still in. “How do you do?”

He tried not to laugh at the stilted manners, more authentic but equally as practiced as his father’s. He took Jasper’s hand. Shook firmly.

“Very well, thanks.” He coughed a little and blushed, because somehow he still felt outclassed by miniature Beaumonts. He dropped his hand and gestured at Will’s phone. “What’re you listening to?”

Will spoke up. “David Bowie, ‘Ziggy Stardust.’ You heard of him? Jazz loves him.”

A dizzying flash, a lithe body dancing, the smell of smoke, a sordid smile and a sharp mouth. He guessed it made sense that Theo would want to share his music with his kid.

Jack didn’t know if he wanted to laugh or cry, and he nodded and did some weird combination of both, which earned him a very strange look from Jasper. Not dissimilar from his father’s frog look—but more like it had been Jack eating the frog, and Jazz was just too polite to mention it.

It was very much time to move on.

“Will, we’ve got brunch going in here—”

“Yeah, Dad.” He and his blond shadow finally detached, and Will smiled at Jazz, shy. “See you later.”

Jack nodded his goodbye, watching Jasper walk away with a bag full of books and a head full of music, and he thought about another boy, and what his life should have been, and wouldn’t it have been better, that first day in the dorms, if he’d shaken his stupid hand.

Things could have been so different.

He turned away, and then just kind of...stopped.

The day was too much.

“Jazz’s dad is divorced, you know.” Will said it almost to the empty hallway, not looking at his dad, who was maybe quietly falling apart. “He says that it’s better for everyone, because now everyone can try to be happy. All the way happy, you know?”

He wrapped his hand around Jack’s elbow, holding it the way he’d done as a little boy, and Jack could feel how his kid was growing up but that he would always, still, be his. Be Will, his child, his heart on the outside of his body.

“Come on, Dad.” He pulled him around, so gentle. “Time for brunch.”

Brunch was a selection of fruit, pastries, and the thick black coffee that the students weren’t supposed to drink but Johnny guzzled anyway, which was somewhat worrying.

Bruch was also extraordinarily uneventful.