Monarch_V
Ross Mallari has a system for everything.
He shows up. He does the work. He keeps his promises to himself even when no one is watching. At twenty-four, he has never been in a relationship - not because he couldn't be, but because no one had ever made him want to try.
Then he hears an exhale in a locker room.
Milo is someone Ross didn't plan for - light-skinned, quiet, creative, and carrying the kind of weight that comes from loving someone for five years and discovering they were never as careful with you as you were with them. He comes to the gym to move on. He doesn't come looking for anything new.
Neither does Ross.
But the gym becomes the sauna becomes the coffee shop becomes something neither of them has a word for - something built from late nights and honest conversations and the kind of wisdom you give freely to other people while quietly aching for yourself.
Ross knows what he feels. He has known for a while. What he doesn't know is whether "you make me happy today" means the same thing to the person saying it as it does to the person hearing it.
Someone I Didn't Plan For is a Boys Love story set in Metro Manila - about first love arriving late, about the difference between ready and willing, and about what happens when two people who weren't looking find exactly what they needed in the last place either of them expected.