Leroy Adkins is an underperformer. He barely graduated. He barely got a job, and he hardly socializes in his day-to-day life.
Zachary Turner has been sick for as long as he can remember, and as he grows older the crushing realization that he never...
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Zachary wasn't sure what had come over him when he had sort of casually announced that he was into men. He guessed that maybe a part of him just wanted to get it out of the way to see if Leroy would redraw his friendship.
He also had a slight idea that maybe Leroy had caught on. He acted very differently when Zach returned to the room, and Zach only needed a few minutes to put two and two together. He knew what his own Netflix home page looked like and what they could deduce from that. Though, he hasn't been thinking about that when he'd let Leroy pick out the movie. Sure, he was a bit socially inept, but he wasn't stupid.
What had surprised him, however, was Leroy's confusing way of handling it. He'd gone from treating physical proximity to him like the plague, to on hands asking about his type and talking around saying the word woman.
Yeah, Zach noticed.
The rest of the movie after the awkward interaction was mostly quiet—well, except for Zach casually muttering—I knew it—when something he predicted happened. That seemed to make Leroy chuckle a bit. Although it was quiet, Zach could sense that Leroy was a bit more comfortable and wasn't treating the inch of space between them like lava. He would occasionally scoot a little too close, and sometimes their clothes would even brush.
The whole ordeal had Zach's heart in his throat more times than once. He put it down to the absolute whiplash the sudden changes in Leroy's behavior were giving him.
He had concluded eons ago that he wasn't going to pursue anything with the man, and it wasn't as if he knew how to in the first place, but he wasn't sure why feelings he'd been good at managing to stay dormant were now all over the place because of Leroy's behavior.
It was the stupid question Leroy had asked out of the blue.
Zach had almost had a heart attack when Leroy had asked him what his type was. It wasn't as if he could have just blurted 'you', but he had been damn near doing so.
When the movie ended, they both watched the credits before a Netflix advert showed up. That was when Zach reached out and closed the laptop before letting out a sigh. "Well, that was as cliche as I thought it would be." He rested his back on the wall, looking over at Leroy, who had been tired of sitting on the edge and was now lying down on the bed, face up.
"I thought it was alright," Leroy mumbled. "I guess it's not interesting when you can guess what's going to happen next."
Zach raised his brow, sensing the playful jab in its tone. "Most stories are the same. There hasn't been an original plot in ages," he said. "It's not my fault they're all using the same beats and outlines."
Leroy laughed. "You fascinate me." Leroy shook his head before looking up at the ceiling.
The words had been blunt and said in between chuckling, but they seemed to run over Zachary's skin like ice-cold water. He felt his chest flutter, and the know-it-all self-assurance he'd had just seconds ago crept out of him and left him a shy and unsure mess.
