The first of July hit Jasper like a ton of bricks.

The sun slowly crept in through his blinds, waking him up as a ray got him square in the face, reddening the skin beneath his eyelids. He opened one bleary eye before groaning and rolling over, enjoying the start to his day off from the country club. But it then soon hit him that it was the start of his and Jeremiah's bet. It was also a Friday, which meant that he was sleeping over at the Fisher house tonight. Where he'd be sleeping, he didn't know, but he knew it was better than to hope for the guest room considering he'd only be staying for one night each week (that would be if he remembered to stay over those Friday nights). All in all, it felt like the deal Lorelai made with her mother Emily so she could put Rory through prep school.

Walking down the stairs after a shower, Jasper rubbed the last bit of sleep out of his eyes as he entered the kitchen, scouring the cabinets and debating going over to the Fishers for breakfast. He found a blueberry muffin, left a note for his mom, and headed out the front door to begin his walk towards the neighboring house, munching on part of his blueberry muffin as he did so. He rang the doorbell and patiently waited for an answer. And like clockwork, Jeremiah was the one to open the door, only this time he was shirtless and in a pair of gray sweatshorts, his highlighted ringlets a little damp from the water—a shower, most likely.

"You're early," Jeremiah commented, widening the door regardless to let Jasper through, "already excited for your kiss for the day?"

"No, I'm just finally taking you up on your offer of eating over here for once," Jasper returned, getting into the habit of taking off his shoes no matter how many times Jeremiah told him it wasn't necessary. They both padded into the kitchen, Jeremiah barefoot and Jasper with his socks on.

"Yeah? What're you hungry for?" Jeremiah asked, leaning against the fridge door. He smirked, inwardly knowing that he was going for a double entendre.

"Honestly, anything sounds good right now. But do you have the ingredients for French toast by any chance?" Jasper definitely caught on to what he said between the lines, but he decided to play dumb and innocent.

Jeremiah had the nerve to look affronted by the question. "I'm gonna pretend you didn't just ask that."

"What?" Jasper scoffed, "It's a simple question. Not everyone has a Brioche loaf just lying around in their bread basket. And who do you think just casually owns a bottle of vanilla extract?"

Jeremiah shook his head as he went around the kitchen, pulling out various utensils and ingredients for the French toast. Jasper took a seat at the island, his chin in the palm of his hand as he watched on, picking apart what was left of his blueberry muffin. Jeremiah was attractive, Jasper knew that much, but there was something different in the way he moved about that made Jasper pay closer attention to him. He had a slightly buff build in his shoulders in comparison to Jasper's lean and wiry stature, back muscles rippling as he worked the pan and spatula in his hand. "You like to cook?" Jasper asked as Jeremiah checked the underside of the toast before flipping it.

"I'd say so," Jeremiah answered, "but mostly breakfast, though. I let my mom and Laurel handle dinner. What about you?"

Jasper hummed, nodding even though Jeremiah couldn't see. "Yeah, I love to cook, given it's one of my multitude of hobbies, next to playing multiple instruments and speaking three languages."

"All right, show-off, what instruments do you play?" Jeremiah turned around, revealing a plate of perfectly brown and golden Brioche slices. Jasper grabbed a plate and began to load it up with three slices. Popping open the maple syrup he answered, "Guitar, both acoustic and electric. Uh, the piano, bass guitar, drums, and occasionally the violin but I don't like that one as much as the others."

Jeremiah nodded, grabbing a few slices of his own. "If I ever steal the guitar out of Conrad's room, will you play something for me sometime?" He cut into his French toast and took a bite, making a show of moaning around the food. "I'm so good."

"Maybe." Jasper laughed, flicking a piece of his French toast at him.

Some time later, they changed into their swim trunks and jumped into the pool, sitting under the water for just a minute before going back up again and breaking the surface. Jasper's hair stuck to his forehead, making him look like a wet dog, and Jeremiah was more than happy to point it out—which then rewarded him with a mouthful of chlorinated water.

The two swam around, starting with a competition of who could get to the other end the fastest—Jeremiah won—and who could hold their breath the longest underwater—Jasper won that one. When they came up for air the second time, Jasper shook his hair out and Jeremiah couldn't help but look at him, considering he never got the chance to really look at him. He had a dimple in both of his cheeks when he smiled, and he had a sharp, angular nose, straight from a Greek statue. And maybe he was delusional, but Jeremiah thought he spotted a tiny gold hoop in his left ear.

Jasper laughed as he pushed his sopping wet hair back, breaking Jeremiah free from his wandering thoughts. "What?" Jeremiah was right, there was a gold hoop.

Jeremiah shook his head, and kept on treading water. "It's nothing."

"You wanna kiss me so bad, huh?"

"Hey, you're the one who brought it up." Jeremiah swam closer to him, getting right into his space, almost daring him to do something.

Jasper gulped, thankfully not audibly, but his Adam's apple was big enough to let Jeremiah know that he was swallowing something. "You're not actually gonna kiss me on the mouth right now, are you?"

Jeremiah shrugged, his grin lopsided. "I'm just easing you into it for now, more or less." With that, he lifted Jasper's right hand out of the water, and cradled it within both of his for a moment. Then, he brought the back of Jasper's hand up to his mouth and kissed it right below his knuckles before simply dropping his hand back into the water.

"I'm swooning already," Jasper said dryly, harrumphing a laugh. His hand felt fine; no heat, no tingling in his fingers. Maybe he was going to survive, after all.

Jeremiah splashed him in the face with a wave of water.

When Jasper came back home, he found his mom on the couch watching TV. What channel it was on, he didn't really know, but it seemed like one of those long-running soap operas from the looks of it. The theme song started and he soon figured out that she was watching The Young and the Restless.

"I did not take you for a soap opera enthusiast, mama," Jasper noted, plopping down on the couch beside her.

"It was either that or Days of Our Lives and I was not prepared to see a young Jensen Ackles on my television screen," Constance replied, taking a sip from her wine glass and setting it down.

Jasper creased his eyebrows, doing the math. "Aren't you, like, the same age as him?"

"Not the point, JJ."

"Good to know. Uh, Jeremiah invited me over to sleep at his place tonight."

Constance nodded. "He does anything below the belt without your consent, I give you permission to bite him."

Jasper did his best not to groan because he knew she meant well, but this wasn't really how he wanted to go about it. "He already got his kiss of the day out of the way, if that's what you're asking. He's not allowed to touch me until the next day."

"Are those the rules of the bet?" Constance asked, turning her full attention to her son. Jasper nodded. "He gets to kiss me once a day, it can last how long I want it to, and when I tell him to stop, he'll stop."

"And you're sure he's going to abide by those?"

"I believe he will."

Constance gave Jasper a mildly worried look, but decided to take his word. "Okay."

Jasper nodded again, letting the silence fill. "Okay. I'm gonna go pack." With that, he got up and went to get his overnight bag ready. Once he was done, he was once again walking his way over to the Fisher house and knocking on the front door, waiting underneath the front step light. Since it was taking a little longer than usual for one of them to answer the door, Jasper looked around. He smiled slightly at the sight of fireflies that were scattered throughout the air, glowing one at a time. He also took note of the flowers surrounding the doorstep—blue and purple hydrangeas, and lots of them.

Finally, the door was pulled open, and instead of Jeremiah standing behind it like usual, it was Conrad this time. Jasper teetered on his feet at the awkwardness that soon piled in, remembering what he said to him at Laurel's book party. He wasn't sorry that he said it, but having to be around Conrad with what had been said was still making him feel weird. Conrad heaved a sigh, and silently widened the door to let Jasper through.

"Thanks." Jasper nodded sheepishly and stepped into the foyer before taking off his shoes, his duffel bag lightly knocking into Conrad's calf by accident. He stood back up and went to set his bag down when Jeremiah came bounding down the stairs, curls bouncing.

"Hey, I would've answered the door but I got too busy setting up," Jeremiah explained, smiling. "I see you've decided to hold up your end of the bargain."

Jasper shrugged. "It was either this or watching soap operas with my mom in the living room."

Jeremiah laughed at that. "Lemme take your bag. Are you hungry?" He went to take the strap of Jasper's duffel off of his shoulder, fingers lingering there for a second before slipping away to get a grip on the strap. Conrad rolled his eyes and made his way into the kitchen to look for something to snack on.

"Starving, actually. What's on the menu tonight?" Jasper responded, starting to follow Jeremiah into the kitchen.

"Honestly, we just ordered a pizza. Hope you either like Hawaiian or meat lover's."

"Dude, I love Hawaiian, actually. Everyone thinks I'm insane for liking pineapple on pizza, my mom even tried to disown me once." Grabbing a paper plate, Jasper reached for the pizza box and a slice of both Hawaiian and meat lover's and sat down at the island to scarf them down.

Jeremiah watched on in mild awe. "You were not kidding about starving, were you?"

"I haven't even eaten since, like, one p.m. and it's," Jasper checked his watch, "eight right now. It's been seven hours."

"Okay, fair enough. You wanna watch another movie tonight?"

"Sure. And then maybe we could go down to the beach later? I think I can see some of the fireflies that are out tonight."

Jeremiah nodded. Sounded like a good plan. "Deal."

The movie they chose that night was Ferris Bueller's Day Off. It was something Jeremiah hadn't seen before, and Jasper was more than excited to watch him watch it for the first time. He went on and on about how watching it was going to be a "formative experience" and how watching the film would "change his life for the better." So they booted up Netflix, and lucky them, it was there.

Then came the dreaded sleeping arrangements.

Jasper was fully under the assumption that he wouldn't be taking the guest room considering that he would only be sleeping over one night a week, and despite being right, he didn't want to be. He had no problem sharing a room with Jeremiah, in fact, he didn't mind (in a hypocritical sense). He just had his reasonable doubts, despite knowing that Jeremiah was more than comfortable with guys his age. It more or less had to do with the fact that the handful of overnight field trips that Jasper had been on put him a little on edge (it wasn't anything like Do Revenge, thankfully, where a horrendous rumor had been spread, but no one wanted to room with him, anyway).

Growing up bisexual wasn't the biggest pain, but most people assumed that you were either a.) a whore, b.) a cheater or the wretched c.) both. Given that Jasper was none of the above, it gave him a decent dose of cynicism and skepticism down the line. So as he stared at the impossibly comfy-looking sleeping bag on the floor next to Jeremiah's bed, he couldn't help but joke, "It's my eighth grade trip to DC all over again."

Raising a curious yet puzzled eyebrow as he fluffed out his own sheets, Jeremiah asked, "What makes you say that?"

"I came out when I was thirteen, so I didn't really know that bisexuality had all these assumptions like being indecisive or a serial cheater. Our trip to DC came around and no one really wanted to room with me because they all thought I was just this total horndog willing to hook up with anyone. But I got grouped up with a couple of guys anyway and they made me sleep on the floor. You don't have to pity me, I just think it's funny." Jasper shrugged, not caring about the situation anymore, considering he didn't see those students ever again because they all ended up going to different high schools.

"Who said anything about pity?" Jeremiah asked, his smile small, but genuine. "You wanna sleep up here instead? I can take the sleeping bag."

Jasper shook his head, huffing out a laugh. "I have to face my trauma at some point."

"You know you don't have to joke about shit like that. Especially not to me."

"I have only known you for a month," Jasper countered.

"And yet I'd like to say we've become fast friends." Jeremiah smiled again, a little wider this time. Not his megawatt grin that would instantly light up any room, but a little more private, like something someone would see when they're just waking up and discovering that he's been looking at them the entire time. Could Jasper file it under his mental folder labeled "Jeremiah Laying it on Thick" or was it just Jeremiah being Jeremiah? Honestly, only time could tell until Jasper was able to tell the two apart.