Chapter 2 – Leon
Chapter Two
LEON
“ N o,” Leon said, turning around and walking right back out of James’ cubicle.
“I didn’t even say anything!” James called, the sound of his dress shoes muffled but still discernible on the carpeted floor as he rushed out of his cubicle after Leon.
“Don’t care. It’s a no,” Leon said, quickening his pace.
“You can’t say no if I haven’t even asked the question yet!” James exclaimed.
Leon jabbed the down button for the elevator. “I cannot be seen with you right now.”
James came up beside him and huffed, “It’s barely even a costume. It’s basically what I wear every day.”
Leon glanced sideways at him, taking in his suit jacket, suit pants, and semi-open dress shirt. Underneath, he had a red t-shirt peeking out. On his face, he wore a pair of fake Clark Kent style glasses, and his hair was swept to the side in an admittedly impressive mimicry of Clark’s hairstyle.
He was always cute, but today he was downright adorable, and Leon could barely stand it.
He couldn’t let James know that, though.
“Exactly,” Leon growled, stepping into the elevator the second the doors opened.
James hurried in after him but kept going until he reached the corner of the elevator.
He proceeded to let out a large sigh and sagged against the wall as the doors slid shut.
That didn’t sound like a normal “thank god it’s Friday” sigh.
Leon turned to face him more fully as the elevator began its slow descent from the fifth floor.
Leon took pride in being pretty good at reading body language.
It had helped him a lot with his ex, who refused to communicate, expecting Leon to somehow read his mind at all times.
It also came in handy with the next-door neighbor girl, who sometimes didn’t know what she was feeling, let alone how to express it.
Just last week, she’d pounded on his door and demanded he sit out on the fire escape with her while she tried to work through why she was so pissed at her mom.
The answer, as it quite often was, turned out to be that Hailey was feeling hurt that her mom didn’t trust her to go with her friends to a haunted house without a chaperone.
Hurt and anger looked different on a person, and Leon had learned over time how to tell the difference.
Today, James looked relatively normal, with his pouty lips and tight lines around his eyes, but there was something about his shoulders that didn’t look quite right.
Actually, come to think of it, his lips also looked a little off.
Usually, they would be quirked up a little at the side, like he couldn’t contain the fact that he actually did enjoy Leon’s antics.
Right now, though, they were pinched together, the way they used to look before he and Leon had become friends.
Bestest friends, as Hailey liked to put it.
Before Leon could decide if maybe he should apologize for his teasing, or for inadvertently dragging him out of his cubicle, or at the very least ask what was wrong, James sighed again.
“My mom was disappointed in my costume, too. It’s the same one I’ve been wearing for years, and apparently it doesn't live up to her ‘creativity quotient,’” James said, with a heaviness in his voice and—ah, yes, that was it—in his shoulders that didn’t seem to be worthy of such a ridiculous statement.
It had taken Leon a while to get used to how often James brought up his mom in casual conversation.
Leon did his absolute best never to bring up his own mam.
That had become significantly easier after he’d said his final words to her and she’d passed the year before.
Things were different for James, though.
His mom was basically his entire world, and that meant Leon had needed to learn how to navigate the many topics and emotions that came with being a caretaker for a dearly beloved parent.
Some days, this meant dragging James to one event or another so he could unwind after taking his mom to a stressful appointment. Other days, it meant sitting with him and letting him ramble on about whatever show they were watching.
Today, it seemed to mean figuring out how Leon had apparently stepped in it by joking about his Halloween costume.
“I’m not disappointed,” Leon said, because that seemed like a good place to start. “I expect nothing less from my favorite mensch. I just can’t be seen walking around your floor with you, or my cool quotient is going to go down with the minions.”
James managed a tiny smile, but it quickly fell back off his lips.
“Yeah…my mom doesn’t want her potential new boyfriend or new girlfriend to see me either.”
…Huh. That was definitely not on Leon’s “mother bingo card.”
Leon’s mam had been known to kick Leon out of the house anytime she had a new man coming over, especially when Leon had somehow started giving off “gay vibes” the assholes she brought home didn’t like.
His mam had definitely never brought home a woman.
What Leon wouldn’t have given to have an actual maternal figure.
Or paternal figure. Or pretty much anyone, other than his bubba, who had died way too soon.
That was besides the point, though.
“Did she actually say that?” Leon asked, his fingers flexing as that all too familiar tingling began to settle in the tips of his fingers.
It had been years since he’d gotten into a physical fight, but his body seemed to remember it all too well.
Obviously, he wasn’t going to fight James’ mom, but if she had actually said that to James?—
“Oh, god no, of course not. She was just kidding about the costume. Or…well, actually, I don’t think she was.
She really likes Halloween,” James said, his brow scrunching in the sweet way it did anytime he said something that truly exasperated him—which happened a lot.
“But anyways, no, she didn’t say that she didn’t want her new, er, friends to see me.
She just wanted the house to herself tomorrow night, and so I’ve sort of been…
What’s the word we used to use in college? Sexiled?”
Leon snorted, but quickly schooled his expression as they reached the floor for the IT department.
He’d never quite shaken the bad boy persona at work, and for the most part, it actually served him well. People didn’t fuck with him, and after word got around that he was part of the little queer brigade that managed to finally get the big bad Antonelli fired, people doubly didn’t fuck with him.
He let his usual scowl slot into place as he walked a few paces ahead of James down the hall to his office.
James had never said anything, but Leon could tell a tiny part of him was jealous that Leon had his own office.
If he ever did say anything, Leon would be quick to inform him that it was mainly because some of the work he did was quite loud, such as unscrewing laptops when some idiot in legal spilled a cup of coffee on it or drilling holes in the sides of desktops for easier access to wires.
He also liked to blast heavy metal at all hours, which was probably the real reason he had been so quickly shoved into his outhouse-sized office and left alone.
When they got to his office, Leon marched inside, and James followed closely behind, shutting the door behind himself and leaning back against it.
Alright, apparently James was in his “holding up walls” mood, which meant there was something more serious going on than his mom’s interesting dating life and his banishment from the house for a night.
Leon turned to wake up his sleeping computer so he could make sure he didn’t have any more outstanding tickets left before the weekend, but his entire body tensed as the heating vent above his door kicked on.
It only took a few seconds for the small office to fill with James’ familiar scent.
It was like walking through a forest after it rained.
It was a clean scent, which made sense for James “the Mensch” Bigley to smell clean and well-groomed, but there was more to it than that.
There was something deeper, almost musky, to it, like maybe the cologne or aftershave or whatever it was mixed with his natural pheromones and accentuated it.
The word “patchouli” always came to mind, not that Leon knew what the fuck that was. All he knew was that James smelled absolutely delicious, which was why Leon often ventured to his open-air cubicle, not the other way around.
Because it wasn’t cool to be so hopelessly attracted to his best friend, and he knew it.
“So,” Leon drawled, forcing his eyes to focus on his screen.
He had one ticket he could immediately assign to his direct report, but there was a second one he should probably deal with himself.
Some asshole in accounts payable had messed up his password so many times he’d locked not only himself, but also his boss, out of the vendor system, and if Leon didn’t get it fixed now, he’d be hearing about it all weekend long.
“So?” James asked.
“So, what are you gonna do while you’re sexiled?” he said, sliding his chair out and collapsing into it. He yanked out his keyboard and quickly forwarded the first ticket before logging into the vendor management intranet's backend.
“I don’t know,” James said, and again, his voice held a lot more than a minor inconvenience of being planless on Halloween night.
Leon weighed his options and decided he wasn’t going to push him to talk about it if he didn’t want to.
“What do you normally do on Halloween?” he asked, although he was pretty sure he already knew the answer.
James sighed a third time. “I usually hand out candy with mom, and then we watch a movie or… I mean, when she was really sick, she’d fall asleep pretty early, but I’d usually turn off the porch lights around eight and watch some old horror film while eating the rest of the candy we didn’t hand out. ”