“It was nice, that you tried even though you sucked at it,” Trevor admitted. He had the excuse of mixing the chicken with the seasonings he’d liberally sprinkled in the bowl so he didn’t have to look up at Lane as he said it.
“Yeah?”
Trevor preemptively flushed, but said what he was thinking anyway. “Cute, even.”
“Couldn’t be as cute as you making faces at my spice drawer,” Lane retorted, but when Trevor glanced up, he was grinning.
“You gonna bitch if I take over the grocery ordering too?”
“Bitch that you’re carrying your weight around here?” Lane’s smile deepened. “Nah.”
Despite the lack of ingredients—and in some ways, a lack of equipment, which Trevor was going to remedy in a few minutes when he grabbed his phone and its Amazon app—dinner turned out really pretty good.
Lane looked over at him after his first bite and just said, “Are you freaking kidding me, Trev?”
Trevor just laughed. “We’re both kind of stupid, aren’t we?”
Lane didn’t agree, but then he didn’t argue either.
After they cleaned up and Trevor took five minutes to scroll through the Amazon app to add half a dozen things he really could not live without to his cart, he headed over to his puzzle.
“You gonna work on that for awhile?” Lane asked and Trevor nodded. Tonight had been good, but also different enough that it had left him feeling a little shaky and uncertain. Like it wasn’t just him forging new ground, but both of them together. If he tried to watch something or read or just went to bed, he wouldn’t be able to calm his mind enough.
But focusing on the puzzle would settle him.
“I’m just gonna—” Lane gestured towards his bedroom. “Watch some stuff on my iPad.”
“Alright.” Trevor glanced over at him. He felt it too, the same draw and the same resulting awkwardness. It would be weird to kiss good night. He shouldn’t want to.Laneshouldn’t want to.
But it felt even weirder just sending him off to another bedroom with a shrug and a smile.
“I guess I’ll see you in the morning?” Lane said, still standing there, still shifting his weight from one foot to the other, eyes looking anywhere but at Trevor.
Trevor understood. Lane was feeling that shaky ground too. Didn’t know what the new rules were. The new norms.
“Yeah.” Trevor offered him what he hoped was a reassuring smile. Hoping it might reassure them both.
“Night,” Lane said, and the look on his face right before he turned to go made Trevor think he wasn’t exactly reassured.
When he turned the corner towards the bedrooms, Trevor let out an unsteady breath and tried to get his brain to refocus on the puzzle in front of him.
But it wouldn’t.
Every time he went searching for a particular piece, he’d find himself spacing out, thinking of the uncertainty in Lane’s expression right before he’d turned—like he’d wanted something and wasn’t sure that Trevor would be into giving it to him.
The craziest part wasn’t even that he might want something; it was how much Trevor wanted to give it to him. No matter what it was.
Finally, he put one last piece in and stood. This wasn’t happening tonight, no matter how much he wanted it to.
Trevor flicked the last light in the living room off and headed towards his bedroom.
But in the hallway, he hesitated. There was light shining from Lane’s bedroom. Not just under the door, but the door itself was cracked, yellow spilling into the hallway.
There was every chance this was going to make everything between him and Lane even weirder, but Lane himself had said that whatever Trevor wanted, he could have.
It wasn’t that Trevor didn’t think Lane hadn’t meant it, but this was different. More intimate. Less sexual.
He let out an unsteady breath and knocked on the door. When he heard Lane’s, “Yeah,” he pushed it open.
