Reality And Us

Chapter Sixteen

It was Monday, and Zane was sitting in his apartment, typing letters into a document on his laptop. He was doing some research on politics, he loved to be informed. He moved his right hand on top of the mouse, putting light pressure on it, his eyebrows were furrowed in concentration.

He clicked on a video in which the minister of diversity, inclusion and youth was talking, the video was pretty new. He stared at it, absorbing all the information as if he was a sponge and the video was water.

Once it was finished, he wrote down a lot of things, he had a lot of documents dedicated to politics on his computer, to keep track of new things and don't forget the old ones.

Suddenly he could hear footsteps behind him, it was Lee. No one else was in the apartment.

"What are you doing?", Zane could hear his boyfriend ask, he didn't like the tone.

Lee didn't seem to be in a good mood, unfortunately.

"You're wasting your time again?", he said, his voice filled with immeasurable disapproval. He never really had liked Zane doing that kind of research, and he was in an incredibly bad mood that day, everything made it worse. His mood swings were huge.

The boy in front of the computer gulped, he felt uncomfortable seeing Lee unhappy, felt uncomfortable being criticized in that way.

"I just wanted to inform myself, I could stop now. . .", he said, incredibly concerned how his boyfriend would react.

"Now's too late, you've already wasted so much time.", Lee said,an angry sigh escaping his throat, "And while you're doing stupid bullshit, I'm expected to clean this mess of a room, ain't I?"

The room wasn't even that messy, most people's houses never looked that clean, but it was still too much for him. Too much untidiness, too much dirt.

Zane didn't know what to say, he felt as if his lips were glued together, he couldn't open his mouth, couldn't defend himself. He just let the other boy talk.

A dry laughter escaped Lee's throat. "I work my ass off to pay the rent, and what are you doing? Sitting here lazily, waiting for me to work, huh? You're a slothful asshole."

Zane wished he could apologize, say how sorry he was, how he had barely been sitting there for half an hour after many hours of work. There were so many thought in his mind and feelings in his chest that he wouldn't have found a way to describe how he felt that moment, he just desperately wanted his boyfriend to calm down, to be okay.

Lee's chest was rising and falling, he was breathing heavily, this whole situation had triggered all those negative feelings in his heart and mind to come to the surface. Some days were good and some were bad, and this day was just there to make him suffer, and now he couldn't hold back all this bad energy inside of him, consuming his mind.

"Everyday I try my best to please you, to make you happy, but you don't even care when I'm not okay, do you? It doesn't matter to you, you're too self-absorbed.", Lee said through gritted teeth, there were tears slipping down his cheeks, he hated everything that moment. Everything.

Zane stared at the boy, he had twisted his neck to look at his boyfriend, but hearing that he  looked at the ground, feeling immensely guilty. There might not have been a good reason to feel guilt, but somewhere in his mind he believed he had done everything wrong, that he had been a bad boyfriend.

"You don't even apologize, you really don't care? Rot in hell.", Lee let out, his face full of disgust and hurt, he left the room.

Zane looked as if he had been punched after those last words, he winced, almost as if he was in pain. In a way, he was.