I JUST WANT YOU TO LIKE ME | ✓

▬ 01: god's own country

            If my mind were a house, Ziri would be the space labelled living room. Just as with our flat, Ziri walked in, painted the walls orange, drew flowers around the light switches, and taped photos wherever he liked without a second thought of getting a return on the security deposit, which I found horrific at first but then I realised I felt at home for the first time in my entire life. If he wants to paint the ceiling, I'll let him sit on my shoulders.

He's asleep now. The hum of the car and the snow that stretches into infinity on either side of the road would lull me to sleep too... if every kilometre we approach Leeds didn't make my insides coil that much tighter. If Ziri were awake, he'd be rambling about summat I probably don't understand but at least it would make me less conscious of every minute the GPS counts down.

Just as I've had the thought, he stirs. Ziri stretches and rubs his eyes. 'Sorry.' The second syllable is lost in his yawn and he blinks slowly. 'Didn't mean to fall asleep on you.'

'It's fine. You're tired.'

'You're tired.'

'You don't have a driver's licence.'

I glance at him to find his eyes narrowed and I expect him to tell me to shut up or to "stop cosplaying his dad" but he smiles instead. Stretching again, he checks the time left on the GPS. I bought one after several arguments caused by Ziri's complete inability to read a map. I guess that's one of the skills you can avoid learning when you have two parents and get to stick to the safety of the backseat.

His eyebrows knit. 'Have you been drivin in silence this whole time?' It's a four-and-a-half-hour drive and he slept for two of those.

'I didn't wanna wake you up.'

'You didn't have to drive in silence.'

'I weren't. You snore.'

Ziri tries to scoff but he's too groggy to stop it from morphing into a laugh. Sleep still keeps him from grounding into the car and he drinks water slowly to swallow his yawns.

I allow him to gaze out the window for a few minutes before I speak. 'How were your office party thing yesterday?' Normally, he would already have told me everything with five different tangents in the middle of the story, but I had a morning shift yesterday — as in 6 am morning — so I were asleep when he got home at eleven. Because at twenty-three, I get tired at ten pm.

'You know, fine.' There's an edge to his tone that's so obvious I'm not sure how I ever believed a single lie he said. And Ziri lies a lot.

'What happened?'

'Nothin.' He shakes his head, fully aware I know he's lying but unwilling to tell me. Until he can't stop the groan that comes from him. 'Just... at some point, people were getting drunk and they started talkin bout all their relationship drama as heteros do in completely inappropriate settings.'

I don't point out that people who need alcohol to speak about their feelings and end up doing so without control are probably in the majority and it's nowt to do with being straight or cis, most of us just haven't gone to therapy since we were fifteen.

Ziri glares at the road, lips pursed. The ticking of seconds is practically audible before he detonates. 'You know how straight women think we're all besties cause I'm queer. Like have you considered, maybe I don't wanna hear intimate details about your sex life just cause we work in the same buildin? And, whatever, that's fine. But then they start drillin me with intrusive questions about my sex life like the frickin FBI, so I just told them we've never had sex to get them to shut up.