Page 6 of Haunted Mediation
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 ofcoffee 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 hispassword 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.”
Yeah, that was pretty much what Leon had pictured: James, all warm and snuggly, curled up on his couch with the light of the television reflecting in his big, cornflower blue eyes.
Leon had been over to his house only once. It had been one of their usual Friday nights, but his mom had taken the car to go to a dinner theater show with someone from her support group. Before Leon could offer to pick him up, James had invited him over to watch the NBA finals game they had been intending to watch at a queer bar across town. Leon had appreciated the chance to get a closer glimpse into James’ life, but what he hadn’t appreciated—or more accurately, needed—was to have the image of James curled up in the corner of his couch carved into his memory.
To make matters worse, James had spent the entire night grinning over at Leon as his team got absolutely trounced. After one too many taunts, Leon had shoved him, and James had tilted to the side, laughing all the way, and then tilted back, right up against Leon.
He hadn’t put his arm around James, even though maybe he should have. Maybe he should have done a lot of things over the past few months, but he was afraid, because, yeah, bad boy Leon got afraid sometimes, too. He didn’t want to risk their friendship, and no matter how hard he tried to read James, he couldn’t figure out if his best friend felt anything more for him than?—
Leon hit enter one letter too soon, and his computer loudly declared, “Access Denied.”
“Stupid…fucking…” he muttered, quickly typing in his credentials before hitting enter again. This time, he was able to get into the backend, and he navigated around until he could find the moron’s login information.
“Uhm…what about you?” James asked.
Leon couldn’t help but smirk at his computer screen. “There aren’t really a lot of trick-or-treating-aged kids in my building, so I usually hang out with Yarmen and watch a movie or go to a bar. The last few years, I’ve worked a late-night shift ’cause no one else wanted it.”
“Ah, that makes sense,” James said.
Leon didn’t need to turn around to know he was probably sagging even harder against the door.
Leon wasn’t going to spoon-feed him the question. To be honest, he didn’t care about Halloween. He’d be fine spending the day running errands and going to the gym like he usually did. After that, maybe he’d order one of those funny pumpkin-shaped pizzas and crack open a pumpkin beer and call it asuccessful night. If James wanted to hang out, he’d also be fine doing that. But it was good for James to ask for what he wanted.
It was also good for Leon to know he wasn’t the only one invested in their friendship. Leon had been the one to establish Friday night as their hangout night. He’d also moved his Saturday night shifts to Sunday nights so he and James could attend more events that only happened on Saturdays. Sometimes, Leon wondered if he was pushing James too hard, trying to get him out of the house to meet new people and form community.
Leon had community; he just didn’t access it very often because he didn’t feel like he needed to. He liked his quiet life. For the most part.
