As much as Leroy had encouraged Zachary to think about himself, and not about upsetting his sister when it came to if he wanted to go to the fair—it didn't mean he wasn't disappointed when Zachary looked him in the eyes when they'd driven to his parking lot and said, "you know. I don't think I have it in me to go anywhere tomorrow."

Leroy had smiled, looking down at his lap, not wanting to show his disappointment. "Oh, okay," he'd said, looking over at Zachary's lawn. "I guess we walked around a lot today."

They had—after the movie they'd looked at stores, and window shopped. At a point, they'd grabbed snacks and even spent some time in the arcade. They'd only started heading home when Leroy pointed out it was getting late.

Dropping Zach off had hands down been the worst part of the day, and when Leroy slept that night, he tousled and turned, occasionally searching for the man with his hands. He wanted him at arm's length and, having had a taste of that, his bed now felt too big—too empty.

When Monday came around, he went into auto-pilot mode, getting ready for work, and heading out as soon as it was time. He had his presentation around ten minutes after eleven in the morning, and he just wanted to get it over with. When it was time, he tried not to look too hard at the people present—his manager, someone else from the marketing team, and two representatives from their client's business.

Leroy had expected to pretty much go through the PowerPoint and call it a day, but the client representatives were engaged and asked a lot of questions about the sampling change. 

When the allotted presentation time ran out, Leroy wrapped things up and asked anyone to email him if they had any more questions. He was stacking up his printouts when his manager approached him, standing right beside him as she stared at the open journal where he'd scribbled his notes.

"Can I have a word with you before you go?" his manager said, leaning forward. Leroy turned to look at her before looking about the room. He noticed his co-worker and the client representatives had started making their way out of the conference room, and it was just him and his boss now.

Leroy looked back at her, raising a brow but nodding anyway. "Sure."

"I have a question," the lady said, sitting at the edge of the conference desk as she dangled her own just under her chin. "How did you figure that out? Not that I'm complaining. If anything, I'm impressed. You've saved us a business deal where all we were planning to do before was pretty much summarize why we couldn't help them."

Leroy stared at his manager for a bit, looking down at the floor as he rubbed the back of his neck. This was unusual. He wasn't used to getting praise. If anything, he was constantly stressed out that his role in the company would be scrapped altogether and he would be let go.

"Er, can I be honest with you?" he said, looking up after a while of thinking.

The lady raised her brow, looking concerned. "You're not going to tell me you outsource your work, are you? Client confidentiality—"

"No, it's not like that," Leroy said, cutting her off. "It's not like that at all," he repeated, hoping that she hadn't assumed something and was going to run with it, without another thought.

"Then what is it?" She asked, cocking her head or the side.

"Well, my friend. He's a copywriter..." Leroy said, cringing at the sound of the word. He'd been calling Zachary his friend regularly it seemed—but it never felt right on his tongue—it sounded fake. They weren't dating yet, and he wasn't sure how comfortable he was off-handily announcing to people that he might have an inclination to same-sex attraction, but he felt guilty whenever the word 'friend' left his mouth. He sucked in his lips, letting the word sit for a bit before he continued talking.

"I was working through the weekend as you told me to..." Leroy said, emphasizing that it had orally been her idea. "And he was just glancing and offhandedly mentioned that the ad would create a sampling bias just by how it was written. It's not like I told him the brand we were working with or gave him any in-depth information. He just looked over my shoulder. It wasn't planned, and I couldn't ignore what he said because, well—he was right."  

"Ah, I see," the woman said, tapping her chin with the pen. "Does he work for any company we might know?"

Leroy shook his head. "He's a freelancer part-time. He's not even under contract anywhere—"

"Would he like a contract?"

Leroy blinked, and he blinked again before narrowing his eyes at his boss. "I'm sorry. I didn't quite get you..."

"Would he like a contract? I'll be honest. HR is always trying to fill the copywriting roles, but there aren't enough hours to make it a full-time position, and you can't really judge most people's work before they're on-boarded, and then you pretty much take what you can get. How about having him on contract permanently? He can bill us hourly as a consultant and work whatever hours he wants."

"I—" Leroy. "I'll ask him."

The conference room was silent for a minute before the lady sighed and stood up straight. "I better start going. If he says yes, can you have his CV and portfolio sent to HR with you as a reference? For formality's sake."

Leroy nodded, and his boss smiled, adjusting her skirt before hurrying out of the conference room.

Leroy stood in the room, still in shock about what had happened. He bit down on his bottom lip as he tried to figure out how to bring up what had just happened to Zachary. He still had half a workday left, so he settled on texting him and breaking the news on a phone call later that day.

Message to: Zachary.

You won't believe what just happened.

MON, 12:45 PM.

Typing...

I think you just got a job.

MON, 12:45 PM.

Leroy saw the bubble with the three dots show up almost immediately, but Zachary didn't get his message sent until a few minutes later.

Message from: Zachary.

What do you mean? Did you do something? Or did you see something?

Mon, 12:48 PM.

Leroy smiled.

Message to: Zachary.

I'll explain after work. I'll give you a call.

Mon, 12:48 PM

The older man liked the message, and Leroy took it as a hint that the conversation was over. He tucked the phone in his back pocket before making his way to his lonely office. He couldn't really concentrate for the most part and spent the next few hours watching the time go by. He even started packing thirty minutes before he was due to clock out, and left ten minutes before, claiming he had to make the early bus. He was equally as giddy on the bus ride back home, and more or less sprinted from the stop to his house when the bus came to a stop at his usual drop-off.

"What made you all excited?" Emilia asked, and Leroy spared a fraction of a second to flip her the bird. "Rude!" he yelled after him as he hurried to his bedroom and whipped out his phone. He called Zachary, staring at the flashing name on his screen in anticipation until he heard the familiar voice.

"Hello?" Zach said from the other end.

"My boss took me aside after my presentation and asked me how I figured out the sampling issue," Leroy started rambling, not dating hello back. "Well, I explained that my friend was actually the one that saw it—"

"Friend?" Zach said, cutting Leroy off.

The younger man paused, frowning a little in confusion. "Yes...?"

There was a silence on the other end for a bit and then a sigh. "Er, did you tell her that just became the gay part, or are we, friends?"

Leroy wasn't sure where Zachary was going with any of this. "I told her because I don't think I'm ready to come out to my boss—"

"Okay, good," Zach said. "I was worried we weren't on the same page."

Leroy dropped to his mattress, sitting down as he stared at the door of his bedroom. "What page are we on?" He asked, pinching the bedsheet fabric with his free hand.

"That we're not friends," Zachary said in a matter-of-fact tone.

Leroy sighed, touching his forehead as he tried to decode what Zachary was saying. "Is that it?"

"Yes," Zach said, quite frankly.

"Okay, then what are we? What's the same page?"

"I don't know what we are but you're not my friend, and I'm not going to talk about you like that," Zachary said, probably referring to how he spoke to his sister and the few internet connections he kept. "You're someone I'm seeing."

Leroy felt the corner of his lip twitch when he heard that. That's just... adorable. The overwhelming feeling in his chest made his face hit up and his stomach fluttered with butterflies. Was Zachary talking about him like a boyfriend? Gosh, he wished he was.

"That's disappointing. I thought I was more important than that," Leroy muttered. "I thought I was your boyfriend."

There was an uncomfortably long pause at the other end of the line until Zach dragged out a sigh. "Err..." he trailed, looking for his words. "Since when."

"Since now," Leroy said, smiling a little. To be fair, they'd already spent a considerable amount of time together, and it wasn't like Leroy didn't think about it. He'd been more concerned that Zach wouldn't be into it, or might call it out as an impossibility, but hearing Zach get defensive about their supposed title meant that he did care—and he did want them to be together regardless of the limitations.

"Oh..." Zachary trailed. "Oh, okay..."

Leroy wasn't sure if Zach was baffled or just shocked into losing all his words, but he didn't want to focus on it too long in case the man changed his mind on the spot.

"Well, like I was saying..." he trailed. "My manager was wondering if you'd like to be contracted with us. You'd get to be a consultant and bill us by the hour and work however you like. It should be flexible enough that you won't get burnt out or get in trouble for making too much with the government—I thought about anything that could possibly be a problem on my transit home, and honestly, I think it's perfect. You don't have to worry too much about how long something takes to deliver. Fuck, I'll type for you if you want—" Leroy paused when he realized that Zachary hadn't interjected once. "Zachary, are you still there?"

The sound of the older man shifting on the other end was audible, but he didn't say anything.

"I'm your boyfriend?"

"Oh, for fuck's sake, please pay attention," Leroy said, laughing through the mix of frustration and amusement. 

"I'm listening... I just wanted to make sure I heard that part right..." he muttered. "About the job. It seems great, but I've never worked for a company. A few clients here and there that ran small stores online, but like, it was never a whole company. How the hell did you manage to get me the one thing I've been looking for, for years?" Zachary asked, and Leroy took that in, remembering all the time Zach would explain how working had just been mostly impossible for him because he couldn't keep up with his work with his disability, and that no one was also willing to hire him for unusual hours.

"Well," Leroy started, undoing the tie that was beginning to feel uncomfortable. "It's luck, and your work spoke for itself during the presentation—"

"It wasn't my work—"

"We would have lost a marketing deal if you hadn't pointed that out," Leroy said, not letting Zach deny his involvement.

"You're a genius," Leroy said. "A literally one I suppose, but whenever I'm with you and we watch movies, talk about books, discuss politics here and there you're extremely good at boiling things to bone and you have an amazing understanding about what makes writing work—it doesn't matter if it's the plot of a movie, or how the ingredient list on a shampoo bottle is formatted. You must know, and it's the most impressive thing I've ever seen anyone do, and it bothers me so much that you've never gotten the accommodations you deserve to do what you do, and you should be so much more confident than you are."

Zachary didn't say anything, and Leroy sighed, lying on the bed as he looked at the ceiling. "Fuck. I don't care how slowly you write your novel idea. I just know it will be amazing when it's done. And I know they'll pay you out of their nose when you get this job to keep your business."

There was still no response from Zach, and Leroy was getting desperate. "Come on Zach, just send me your CV and portfolio. If you think I oversold you or something, they'll make up their mind when they have that."

"Please?"

"I'll send it. Just text me your email."

Leroy sighed, as the tension in his nerves loosened up. "You won't regret it."

"Leroy?"

"Hmm?"

"Just to make sure when you said we were boyfriends, you weren't just teasing me, right?"

"Oh, my God. No, I wasn't teasing you," Leroy groaned, chuckling as he brought his fists to his face. "Are you going to confirm every other hour now?"

"I might, just in case," Zach said in a tone that didn't seem ironic.

Zachary's response sent Leroy into another fit of laughter.

Zach was so peculiar.

His boyfriend was so peculiar.