Chapter 4 – Leon
Chapter Four
LEON
W hat the fuck was he doing?
Hold your hand and call you darlin? Seriously?
Leon hadn’t called his last ex “darlin’.” He hadn’t called anyone that since his first boyfriend, who had royally trashed Leon’s heart.
If he were being honest with himself, which he tried to do as often as he could, Leon could admit he didn’t have the best dating history.
He’d seriously dated five men, and each one of them had taught him a different lesson in how to get his heart stomped on, his boundaries breached, and his trust shattered.
Not that watching his mam and her parade of suitors hadn’t already done a great job of that for him when he was a kid.
Why, then, had he thought it was a good idea to tease James, only to have his teasing come true, like some sort of demented self-fulfilling prophecy?
Probably because James was just so damn cute.
One moment he was jokingly calling Leon “daddy”—which, no, absolutely not, but he was right, Leon was above kink shaming—and the next, he had tears in his eyes as he stumbled through the first of what was more than likely going to be a dozen or so rooms in the old factory turned haunted house.
It’s not like this was the first time they’d held hands.
They’d been instructed to hold hands for almost an hour during their conflict mediation session.
Since then, Leon had given James a hand up from his couch, a cafe chair, or a low restaurant booth plenty of times. Why did this feel so different, then?
Boys are often only focused on one thing.
Damn, wasn’t that the god's honest truth, though? James felt so good under Leon’s arm, and he really did look good in a suit. To make matters worse, those damn dress pants were so much more flattering than the ones he’d been wearing the day before. He had a fantastic ass: round and oh-so biteable.
Sadly, Leon couldn’t see his ass, or pretty much fucking anything, because the next room they were now stumbling through was pitch black.
“Seems like a tripping hazard,” James mumbled as he pressed up against Leon’s side.
His words echoed a little around the space. Thus far, they’d made it about a quarter of the way into the room without running into anything. Leon was just beginning to wonder if maybe it was empty, and the dark was the only scare factor, when something grabbed his leg.
“Motherfucker!” Leon shouted, kicking out with his leg.
Whatever it was let go, and he heard a skittering noise and then silence once again.
“Are you okay?” James whispered, as if whatever was there with them in the darkness wasn’t already well aware of their presence after Leon’s shout.
“Something grabbed my leg, but it’s gone now,” Leon grunted. “Fucking scared the shit out of me.”
James breathed out quietly in a soft staccato rhythm that took Leon a moment to recognize as a muted laugh. “Well, at least you’re finally being supportive.”
Leon was tempted to raise an eyebrow, but James wouldn’t be able to see it in the dark. Was that what he’d meant? He’d wanted Leon to be as scared as he was?
Leon didn’t really love haunted houses. He didn’t like random shit touching him, and he sure as fuck didn’t want to have to worry about accidentally punching some poor actor if they jumped out at him.
He’d tried to be as gentle as he could with his kick, and given that there hadn’t been any responding grunt or groan, he assumed whatever grabbed him hadn’t been human, or if it had, Leon hadn’t made contact with his kick.
When nothing else attempted to grab him, Leon began leading them forward again. He angled his body slightly ahead of James, so that whatever they encountered would hit Leon first.
That was how he ended up with a face full of spiderwebs. He growled in annoyance and quickly ripped them off his face, pausing for only a second to see if anything else was following before he pressed ahead.
James squeezed his hand once, possibly in question, and Leon squeezed back. For some reason, this caused James to clamp his fingers more firmly around Leon’s. Unfortunately, that pressed Leon’s rings painfully into his other knuckles, and he pushed his fingers out on reflex.
Like Leon’s hand was on fire, James immediately loosened his grip, but before he could do something stupid like let go while they were in the middle of a pitch black fucking room, Leon turned his hand to the side and threaded their fingers together.
Without the use of his vision, he was much more aware of sound, so he caught the exact moment James’ breath hitched.
“What? Did something touch you?” Leon asked, pulling James in front of him so he could fend off whatever was coming after James.
“N-no, I…sorry. I wasn’t expecting… You just surprised me,” James whispered.
His face was only an inch or so away from Leon’s, and his warm breath ghosted over Leon’s cheek. For one reckless moment, he imagined tilting his face and pressing their lips together.
He could blame the dark. He could blame that beer he’d chugged, which, to be honest, he’d stopped feeling twenty minutes into their walk.
He could blame the fact that this frustrating, schoolyard crush he had on James had kept him from hooking up with anyone else for almost six goddamn months, and he was dying .
Of course, he wasn’t going to do any of that. No, instead he pulled James back to his side and continued moving slowly through the room.
That, he could blame on his own stupid, chicken-shit self for not coming clean about his feelings when they’d first started.
It had been a particularly warm afternoon in May, and they’d been sitting on a park bench, eating lunch together. James pulled his backpack onto his lap and unzipped it, hesitantly looking into its depths and then back up at Leon.
“Whatcha got in there?” Leon drawled, his curiosity not enough to draw his attention away from the adorable corgi playing with a frisbee several yards away.
“I, uh…overheard you telling one of my minions that Yarmen goes through toys faster than you know what to do with. I saw these the other day and…well, I feel like I can’t ever quite make up for how I treated you that first day we met, so…here.”
James shoved a large bag of brightly colored cat toys in Leon’s face.
It was filled with rainbow-shaped toys and toys in the colors of the rainbow, as well as the gay pride flag.
Leon was pretty sure he’d seen them before, and sure enough, when he checked the tag, it was from a local queer owned pet store that had flyers up at the Rainbow Bean, advertising custom pride flag colored toys available for special order.
Given that James had never owned a pet, this meant that not only had he gone to the store for no other reason than to buy these toys for Yarmen—who, at this point, James hadn’t even met yet—but he had also custom ordered the toys in Leon’s pride flag colors.
They’d both been painfully awkward about the exchange. Leon tried to say he couldn’t accept it, and James immediately went on the defensive, saying, “What the heck am I going to do with custom-made cat toys?” confirming Leon’s suspicions.
“You’re right. Obviously, while I can’t accept these, Yarmen sure can, and he’s very grateful,” Leon said.
James nodded sharply before stuffing the remaining quarter of his sandwich in his mouth and turning away.
While they’d both been staring forward, Leon cleared his throat. “I’m sorry if I never said this clearly, but I forgive you. You don’t have anything to apologize for, and you absolutely don’t need to make anything up to me.”
“So…what you’re saying is I should cancel the recurring order of cat toys I put in with them?”
Leon jerked his head around and found James smiling softly to himself. For the life of him, Leon couldn’t tell if he was joking or not.
“Where the fuck am I going to put a recurring order of cat toys?” Leon huffed. “My place isn’t that big.”
“Well, that’s not really my problem, is it?” James said, sniffing indignantly. “You’ve never invited me over, so how am I supposed to know what sort of cat toy storage space you’re working with?”
“Alright, mensche, why don’t you come over Friday and see for yourself, then you can figure out what to do with all these toys—and any others you may have fucking ordered,” Leon said, shoving the bag of toys back into James’ hands.
James stared at him, his face stuck somewhere between hope and hurt.
“Yarmen instantly falls for anyone who gives him new toys,” Leon explained, turning to look back at the playing corgi. “These are pretty kickass, so I feel like you deserve to be the one to give them to him.”
Thus started their weekly Friday hangouts, as well as James and Yarmen’s love affair.
Along with all these damn feelings Leon had for him.
Now, something made a concerning-sounding creak in the darkness, and Leon pulled James a little tighter to his side as they hurried through the rest of the room.
When they finally reached the opposing wall, Leon felt along it with his free hand until he found a blackout curtain.
He pulled them both through it and had to squint at the glaring red lights they emerged into.
The room was, quite literally, dripping with blood.
It was running down the walls from what looked like open wounds carved into cement.
Pools of it were collecting at the base of the walls and slowly draining down a grate in each corner.
Leon scanned for threats, but it didn’t seem like there were a lot of places for jump scares to be lurking?—
And then his eyes landed on a person.
He’d been a little surprised they hadn’t encountered any people yet, but the sign at the ticket booth said there would be live scares taking place.
They were supposed to yell “Tomato” if the person did anything that made them uncomfortable, or if they needed to stop the skit they were about to perform.
“Welcome,” the person said. They were wearing heavy black robes, with a black veil completely obscuring their face.