Chapter 1 #2
It wasn’t the same thing, but James had been going through his own form of self-discovery for the past several months.
As his mom continued to regain strength and the ability to manage things around the house, James was reckoning with how much he’d used his caregiving responsibilities as a reason—and even an excuse—to not invest in himself and his life.
He suddenly found himself in his early thirties with only two friends and his first relationship in over a decade.
To say the learning curve was steep was a bit of an understatement, but he was doing his best to rediscover what he liked and the relationships he wanted to invest in.
Leon was doing much the same, interrogating habits and coping mechanisms he’d had for years, and trying to figure out what he wanted to keep doing and what he wanted to change.
“Do you want to watch the drag competition when we get back?” Leon asked.
All of Leon’s anxiety seemed to have dissipated, and he hip bumped James, causing him to stumble over his next step.
“If that will keep you from knocking me over, sure,” James teased.
Leon bumped him again, and James managed to maintain his footing, but he glared at his smirking boyfriend. He tried to hip bump Leon back, but since he was holding onto Leon’s waist, all he really did was make them both sway back and forth with their next step.
“Nice try, little mensch.”
“I’m not even that little!” James complained. “Aspen is shorter than I am.”
“And you’re both shorter than me and Noah,” Leon said as if that somehow won him the argument.
“It’s not fair that there’s no adjective I can add to my nickname for you that wouldn’t sound stupid. ‘My big baby’ doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.”
Leon snorted as they approached his apartment building. He pulled his key out of his back pocket, and James did little to assist, continuing to cling to his side.
“I’m not really that big,” Leon said as he opened the door to the foyer.
“Well,” James said, squeezing Leon’s hip as they were hit with a blast of warm air. “Some parts of you are.”
This time, it was Leon who missed a step. “Are you trying to flirt with me?”
“What a scandalous thought! Me, flirting with my boyfriend,” James joked as they walked past the mail room.
A familiar blonde head popped out from around a corner of mailboxes.
“Ew, old people flirting,” Hailey said, completely oblivious to the older woman pulling mail out of her box behind Hailey.
The woman, who James thought might live on the same floor as Hailey and Leon, rolled her eyes at all three of them.
Hailey turned around and waved to her before popping back into the room to presumably close her mailbox.
“If we run, we might just be able to get away,” Leon whispered, right as Hailey emerged from the room, holding Trina’s hand.
“Hi, Trina,” James said, waving like some sort of dork.
Trina lifted their chin at him with a slight smirk. “Hey.”
“What are you guys up to?” Hailey asked as she and Trina followed them towards the stairs.
“No. Absolutely not,” Leon said.
He removed his arm from around James’ shoulders so he could take his hand and hurry him along.
“I’m just asking to be polite!” Hailey called, but Leon shook his head and walked faster. They entered the staircase at something close to a jog.
The last two times Hailey had casually asked what they were doing, James and Leon had somehow ended up roped into the teenage white lies she told her mom.
He could hear Trina’s combat boots clicking on the stairs behind them as they rounded the first landing, along with the soft padding of Hailey’s ballet flats. “Mom is home, and we’re having dinner with her. Thanks for asking,” Hailey called loudly.
“I think they might actually be running from you, boo. Who knew you were so scary?” Trina deadpanned.
“I am pretty intimidating,” Hailey said.
Leon huffed and pulled James up the stairs. Thank god he only lived on the third floor.
“You’re definitely pretty,” Trina said, their voice barely carrying up the staircase.
“Aww, thanks, pookie!”
“No,” Leon growled loudly before shoving open the door to their floor. He rushed James down the hall and practically threw himself into the apartment.
James caught the door before it slammed shut and poked his head out to see Hailey and Trina strolling hand in hand down the hall towards them.
“Have a great dinner!” James said cheerily, mostly because he knew how much it irritated Leon when he prolonged their interactions with Hailey, giving her more time to implicate them in her trouble.
“You guys have fun doing whatever it is you’re doing. Try not to break a hip or whatever!” Hailey called, and Trina burst into surprised laughter.
Leon pulled James into the apartment, and James was laughing, too—
Until he couldn’t laugh anymore because Leon had shoved him up against the closed door, sealing their mouths together.
James tipped his head back, allowing Leon’s lemongrass-flavored tongue to slide into his mouth. He wrapped his arms around Leon’s shoulders and let out a surprised squeak when Leon grabbed the backs of his thighs and hefted him up.
“Leon,” James gasped as he wrapped his legs tightly around Leon’s back.
“Break a hip, my fucking ass,” Leon grumbled.
James couldn’t help but laugh again, even as Leon carried him into the bedroom and kicked the door shut so they wouldn’t be bothered by his cat, Yarmen.
“Have you told Hailey how much you care about her?” James asked, resulting in him getting tossed onto the bed rather roughly.
“No,” Leon growled, yanking off his shirt.
Today, he was wearing a bright red belly button piercing, and he had actual rings in his nipples. James' mouth ran dry as he envisioned yanking on them with his teeth.
“Well…by your account, you probably should…” James trailed off as Leon dropped his jeans, revealing silky black boxers.
“Darlin’,” Leon growled.
James looked up into dark brown eyes, swirling with some cross between annoyance, lust, and a mysterious third thing James had been seeing more and more of lately. He was starting to wonder if it was anything like the deep, aching feeling he was beginning to have for Leon.
“Yeah?” James asked, falling back onto his arms as Leon approached the bed.
“How about we circle back to that later, hm?”
“Well, you know what happens when people say they’re going to circle back,” James said, dropping down onto his back as Leon climbed on top of him.
“You forget, and suddenly it’s two weeks after the holidays, and the project is nowhere near done, and you’re both left having to explain to your boss why–”
Leon placed his hand over James’ mouth as he began undoing the buttons on his shirt. “I will undress you one-handed if you keep pushing me. Or you can be a good little mensch and help,” Leon said, bending down to replace his hand with his mouth.
James hummed happily into the kiss and thrust his hips up against Leon’s ass.
“Is that a yes?” Leon whispered in his ear.
“Yes, my big baby,” James said.
He didn’t get the use of his mouth back for quite a while after that, which he figured was
well worth the joke.
“I don’t want you to be nervous,” James said as he held Leon’s hand on the walk from Leon’s car to the front door of James’ childhood home.
“Well, that makes two of us, but it doesn’t do a whole hell of a lot to make me feel less nervous,” Leon grunted, even as he squeezed James’ hand tighter.
“I promise she’s going to love you on sight. I’ve only ever told her nice things about you.”
“Other than all those years we sort of hated each other at work?”
James snorted. “It might be hard for you to believe this, given how you’re basically the center of my universe now, but it wasn’t always like that. I never used your name; I just said I had an office rival who got sent to accidental couples’ counseling with me.”
James nearly toppled over backward when Leon jerked to a stop.
“I’m…what?” Leon asked
Uh oh. He had meant it as a joke, sort of like “you’re not the main character, Leon, relax,” but…the truth was, Leon was one of the main characters in James’ life. Or at least the very sexy “bad boy except not really” love interest.
“Uhm… You’re the center of my–”
Leon interrupted him with a kiss that tasted like salt and anxiety.
James kissed him back, squeezing Leon’s hand until his rings left grooves in both their fingers.
Leon was the one to break the kiss, and when he did, he stared hard into James’ eyes. “Are you just saying that to distract me?”
“I’m sorry, we literally share a calendar.
Have you ever seen anything on there that isn’t a shared event with you or my mom?
” James asked, unable to stop himself from resorting to snark, even all these months into their relationship.
“You’re one of the two–okay, I mean, I guess now you’re one of four people in my life, but…
that’s just the truth. It’s not an over exaggeration or a distraction. It just is.”
Leon searched his face as James began to lose feeling in his fingers. He was pretty sure it wasn’t from a lack of breathing, which happened to Leon when he got upset. It was because Leon had a stranglehold on his hand.
“Darlin’… I don’t know what to do with that thirty seconds before I meet your mother for the first time,” Leon said, and his voice was painfully sincere.
“You don’t need to do anything with it. I’m sorry if that was overwhelming or not something you wanted to hear. I was trying to make a joke, but I guess there was a little too much truth behind it.”
James gently rested his other hand atop their joined hands. Leon immediately loosened his grip, and his shoulders slumped out of their tense position.
“It’s not a bad thing. It’s…a lot, but a lot in a good way. I just…”