There's a new guy on Jim's bus route and he's proving to be very distracting.
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Jim double checked he had his bus pass before he left the house, picked up his bag and went to work. It was a twenty minute bus ride from his flat to the British Library here he worked as a conservator under the Head Curator, a stern faced man named Jonathan Silver. He was fierce and demanding and had taken Jim under his wing to teach him all he knew. That in itself made the job extremely rewarding but it also made for long hours and the sacrifice of any kind of social life that Jim had.
If he was being honest with himself though, it hadn't been much to begin with. Jim wasn't exactly sociable, preferring to spend his evenings at home in his flat reading a good book and tucked on the sofa with a cup of tea and a plate of chocolate digestives at his elbow. It was a source of some frustration to Tom and Ben, his friends at work.
The fact that he was gay also didn't help matters. Jim hated the scenes he found in clubs and would rather have died than use Grindr. His introverted nature was horrified at the thought of having a stranger come into his house, and so unfortunately for him sex was a rather infrequent activity. Jim made do with his hand and a Cockyboys subscription instead, but some days he longed for actual contact with a person.
He'd always had a vivid imagination so he channelled a lot of his frustration into his writing instead. He had published a few small pieces and was now working on something longer, but he also had another outlet in the form of a black A4 Moleskine journal which held the writing that he never showed to anyone else.
He got to the bus stop, grinning to himself at the thought of what his friends would do if they knew about what he secretly referred to as his sex diary. It was filled with his dreams and the fantasies that had a way of attacking him at the worst possible time.
The bus stop was filled with the usual assortment of commuters to be found in London on a Monday morning. Jim looked at the others in their suited and booted business wear and counted himself lucky that he had no dress code for work and could wear what he chose. That morning it consisted of jeans, Converse, a soft grey t-shirt and an even softer grey cardigan over it. Tom and Ben liked to tease him for dressing like a middle aged writer, but Jim preferred comfort over style.
The bus arrived and Jim took his pass out of his hand and stood in line to get on, holding it to the reader and then going to get his usual seat at the back. He put his ear buds in, music drowning out the world around him and took his kindle out of his messenger bag and turned it on. He was halfway through Stormy Weather and he was just getting back into it when the bus doors closed and the bus started to pull away.
Something out of the corner of his eye caught his attention and Jim lowered the kindle to see a man running alongside the bus and yelling. Jim smiled to himself, knowing that in London bus drivers had the most amazing ability to ignore you even when you were right in front of them so when the bus actually slowed and came to a stop, he was more than a little surprised.
The man got on, panting and thanking the bus driver effusively as he dug around in his pocket for his wallet, which he then pressed to the reader. He started to make his way towards the back of the bus and that was when Jim blinked.
He normally didn't stare at people in public, but he really couldn't help himself. The guy was gorgeous – tall and dark haired and stubbly in that annoyingly fashionable way that Jim could never get right. He was wearing black skinny jeans and work boots that were unlaced at the top, a red and black plaid shirt over a t-shirt with a band name on the front that Jim had never heard of and a black leather jacket. He looked like the hipster stereotype to end all stereotypes.
