No Place Like Home (Matty Healy/George Daniel/Jesse Rutherford)

Monday

Jesse Rutherford sits at the kitchen table, his fingers tapping against the hardwood surface impatiently. He's waiting for the pan to start sizzling so he knows he can tip the rest of the onion in; hopefully the food will be ready by the time they're home - fuck, they should be here soon, and he can't possibly go thirty seconds without thinking about it.

He realises it's probably a bit too cold in the house - he's had the heating on low, it's only November and he doesn't want to waste the money, but Matty will be shivering from the cold outside anyway, and after however many months they've pretty much lived in a bus for (Jesse knows it's almost four, but he doesn't like to think of how long he's missed them for), he and George will both want the heat.

Jesse rushes off to flick the switches on all the radiators in the house, and as he gets back to the kitchen, the test piece of onion starts to sizzle, so he slides across the stone floor in his slippy socks, and tips the onion from the chopping board into the saucepan.

The smell of onions in the frying pan, cooking with various spices and George's favourite fancy olive oil, spreads throughout the flat as Jess pushes them around with a wooden spoon. It's only going in a soup, but he wants it to be good for his boyfriends when they get home: Matty and George are on a stupidly long overnight bus journey that encroaches into the next day - today - back from Glasgow, and Jesse is aware that they'll both need a good meal when they get home.

When the onions are soft, Jesse chucks them into their soup maker along with the leeks, potatoes, and hot water before blending them together and setting it the medium setting to simmer for a bit. It should be done soon, just needs to heat up a bit more: Jesse's already boiled the potatoes, so really, it's just a question of getting it hot enough for when they arrive.

He's not one hundred per cent on when Matty and George will get home - around midday, he's been told, but their estimates are infamously poor. And so, Jesse isn't surprised when they're not home by half twelve.

He pours the soup out into three bowls nevertheless, and puts cling film over the tops so that no flies or anything would get in - despite it being winter, and the fly population therefore being at a low point in the year. He just doesn't want to take any chances for their first proper, sit-down meal together in over three months.

Jesse had thought he could handle being away from Matty and George for such long periods of time - in fact, when their relationship started out, he hadn't been particularly bothered about George at all. It was all Matty at first, but by this point he feels almost as much love for George as he does Matty.

Thing is, it turns out being away from your boyfriends for months at a time is a whole lot harder than being away from a friend who you have a crush on, especially when there are two of them.

He is - of course - glad that Matty and George can find comfort in each other while they're away from him, because - of course - Matty and George suffer the same heartbreak that Jesse feels every time they leave him, though Jesse's is somewhat more distilled: they still have each other while Jesse is left alone. They have the excitement, the rush of touring. They have the countless fans to keep them company.

They'd agreed as a collective that it's fair enough if Jesse wants to fuck anyone else while Matty and George are away, but he can't bring himself to. There's no one else he truly wants any more, anyway.

Jesse is well aware that it's absolutely and totally worth it, though, for what he gets while they're all home: missing them both is impossibly hard, but he knew it would be a strain from the start, and the payoff is inexplicable.

It's ten to one by the time Matty and George eventually arrive in their taxi, having been dropped off in the centre of London so the bus could go back to the company they were renting from. Traffic had been awful, so George tells Jesse as they step over the threshold, completely drenched from the freezing winter rain, while apologising profusely for their wetness and how late they'd been.