James nudged him with his shoulder, and he glanced up briefly before looking away again. “Was it okay that I told themyour New Year's resolution?” he asked, his breath puffing out in front of them. “I thought it was really sweet, and you seem to be getting along with them so well, I thought they’d like to hear it, but…basically as soon as I said it, I realized I might have fucked up.”
“You didn’t mess up,” James said, reaching for Leon.
It was hard to hold hands while they were both wearing gloves, so James held onto a few of Leon’s fingers.
“Honestly, I probably would have told them eventually,” James said. “Either as a joke that I managed to check it off so quickly or something like that, but…I think that’s because it’s not always easy for me to admit when I like or care about someone, even friends.”
Leon squeezed his fingers. “I think it’s nice to tell people you care about them.”
James raised an eyebrow, a move he’d lovingly stolen from his sometimes ridiculous boyfriend. Both of them had sat on their feelings for each other for months before finally coming clean—and really, that had basically been by accident.
Leon’s already cold-pinkened cheeks darkened. “Yeah, okay, I know. I’m working on it, though.”
Something squirmed in James’ stomach. It was that damn rubber band ball again, the one that seemed to form whenever he was anxious, stressed, horny, or–as he was beginning to suspect–feeling strong feelings of affection and possibly something else for his boyfriend.
Right now didn’t seem like the time to unpack that, though. “Have you told Aspen how much you care about them?” James asked instead.
“Yes, actually. A few days ago, I was texting them at two in the morning about ADHD burnout, and before we went to bed, I told them how glad I was to have them as a friend.”
James tightened his grip on Leon’s fingers, genuinely considering taking off his glove so he could properly hold his hand. They seemed to be on the same wavelength, though, because Leon let go of his hand so he could wrap an arm around James’ shoulder instead. James threaded his arm around Leon’s back, and that ball quivered in his belly.
“I’m really glad you have Aspen, too.”
Aspen’s insight into not only Leon’s ADHD but also his dyslexia had been a godsend. Leon was going through something his therapist called skill regression, which apparently happened to a lot of neurodivergent folks when they first got diagnosed and began to unmask. Leon had explained it as all the coping mechanisms he’d accidentally developed to keep up with his neurotypical peers and colleagues stopped working once he knew he was using them. Or, to use his exact words, “It’s like if you’re in a hurry and you stub your toe, and you don’t realize it until you’re on the bus and then all of the sudden your toe really fucking hurts, and it’s much harder to walk off the bus than it was to rush onto it.”
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 behindHailey. 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.
