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Chuck Grant was a good roommate.
He respected the fact that cohabitation required consideration: he kept his noise down at times when other people might be sleeping, he always washed his dishes within twenty-four hours of using them, and he definitely didn't develop awkward crushes on people he was living with.
Until he did.
Liebgott was a casual acquaintance, a friend of a friend who Chuck sometimes ran into at parties. They'd become roommates because Chuck's previous roommate had lost his job and was moving back home, leaving Chuck looking for someone new who could move in fast and help him make rent. He'd posted about it on Facebook, a few friends had shared it, and it turned out that Liebgott had been wanting to move for a while. He hadn't been willing to risk trading in irritating roommates for terrible ones, but mutual friends had vouched for Chuck.
A few quick chats had unearthed enough common interests that Chuck was confident they’d be good friends and so two weeks later Chuck was helping Lieb carry boxes in from his car.
The attraction had come several weeks later and was wholly unexpected.
Liebgott wasn't bad looking by any stretch, but not really Chuck's usual type. Chuck had always gone for the outdoorsy types, all flannel and fishing rods and fire building and Liebgott was none of that. He liked cars and band t-shirts and bitched every time he had to go out in the rain. There were plenty of people out there who’d consider themselves lucky to score with a guy who looked like Lieb did, but Chuck wasn’t one of them. At least not until a month and a half after Joe had moved in, when he realised that the generic muscled body he tended to fantasise about in the shower had suddenly got wirier and gained tattoos. Very familiar tattoos.
But Chuck had self control. A few stray thoughts while he was unfocused could be pushed away. It was hardly unusual for his mind to wander towards somebody who was in proximity and had a tendency to hang out in just a towel after showering, but that didn’t mean anything.
No, it was the other thoughts that worried him.
Especially when, after weeks of takeout and microwave meals, Joe bought a set of pans and revealed he could cook.
So he had a nice body and a killer laugh, liked the things that Chuck liked, and was a delight to live with.
Chuck Grant was in trouble.
*
Denial was his first response.
He wasn’t very good at it.
Chuck just wasn’t the sort of person who could lie to himself or ignore his problems until they went away. He was attracted to Joe and no amount of pretending his heart didn’t pick up at the sight of Joe rolling up his sleeves to chop vegetables or bending over the open hood of his car to check or tune or clean some part of his engine could actual make his attempts to tell himself he wasn’t interested true.
Then came distraction.
It would be far easier to not be attracted Liebgott if he had somebody else to focus his attention on. But finding a suitable distraction was hard. He couldn’t talk for ten minutes with anybody of his usual type without just being annoyingly reminded of his exes, and the few times he went out and tried to hook up he just hadn’t found anybody who caught his attention. Anyway, he hadn’t brought anybody home since Lieb had moved in and they’d never actually hashed out any ground rules on the topic of bringing people home. Chuck knew from experience with his previous roommate that sound carried through the bedroom walls.
He even resorted to trying apps. Briefly. After the third blurry dick pic, he deleted grindr off his phone. He wasn’t going to waste his time dealing with people who couldn’t even be bothered to make the effort to hold the camera steady and maybe turn on a lamp for some decent lighting.
Step three was to try and convince himself that Liebgott wasn’t as attractive as he seemed. After all, he might also be the type of guy to send terrible quality dick pics, he just wasn’t sending them to Chuck. It was hard though. Chuck had no problem being an asshole to people who deserved it, but it felt unreasonably dickish to deliberately try to pick faults with somebody who’d never given him any reason to. Well, except for the fact that Lieb never washed the blender properly, but that was a drop in the ocean compared to all of the things he had going for him.
No. Chuck had a crush and it wasn’t going away.
*
In the absence of a solution, Chuck switched his approach to one of damage control.
Objective one: Don’t make things weird.
Objective two: Don’t let the crush get any worse.
The first, he felt he was doing a pretty good job of. He'd never been the type of guy to ignore other people's boundaries just because he wanted to be closer and while he was no actor he was pretty good at maintaining his normal habits so there was no reason Joe would see that something had changed.
The second was not going nearly as well. Were he a different sort of guy, he'd accuse Lieb of deliberately attempting to seduce him.
Of course, that was absurd.
But it didn't change the fact that despite the cold weather, Joe had a habit of cranking the heat up and the wandering around the apartment in barely anything. Or that he was constantly making Chuck laugh with his daring jokes and then flashing that winning smile like he was so pleased to get a reaction.
And whatever the reason, nothing changed the fact that this was turning from simple lust into something way more complicated and potentially painful with every casual touch and blossoming inside joke.
*
Chuck didn't want to be the guy who ruined their friendship with his feelings, but he couldn't keep being the guy secretly crushing on his roommate either. He still hadn't talked to Joe about laying down their house rules on people staying over because he couldn't face thinking about it. And despite how sleazy it made him feel afterwards, he couldn't resist looking when Joe hung around the apartment half naked and there really was nothing he could could do about the way those thoughts slipped into his dreams. All in all, unbearably not cool.
He was pretty sure that he didn’t have to worry about Joe feeling trapped or pressured, Joe wasn’t the type of guy to shy away from voicing his disagreement. In the end, he decided to just say it while they were eating dinner, take-out because the stove needed cleaning and neither of them had got around to do it.
Yes.
He was going to say it.
He opened his mouth. Closed it.
I like you?
,
I have feelings for you?,
or perhaps he should build up to it a little,
I think you should know
, or,
I’m not expecting anything from you but...
He shook his head. No. Chuck had never found over thinking helpful.
“I’m attracted to you.”
“Huh? What did you say?” Joe leaner over and grabbed the remote off the coffee table, turning the TV down and looking over at Chuck.
Urgh. Wonderful. Still, he wasn’t going to chicken out now. “I... you’re a great roommate but,” no stalling, “It’s got kind of weird because I’m into you.”
Joe muted the TV. “Really?”
“Yeah,” Chuck said, not sure what to make of Joe’s dubious tone. “I... since a while after you moved--”
“No,” Joe said, shaking his head. “I mean, c’mon, February 12th? Where's your sense of timing?”
Chuck blinked at him. Timing? “What?”
“I'm flattered you couldn't hold out two more days but...”
“You would be happier if I’d told you on Wednesday?” Chuck asked, perplexed. How could waiting a few more days lessen the awkwardness of the situation he’d put them in.
“Well yeah, it's romantic,” Joe said, which
what?
, “And it would make our anniversary and valentines the same day so less shit to remember.”
Pause.
Rewind.
“Anniversary?” Chuck echoed.
“Well, I guess it depends when you’re counting from,” Joe commented. “Actually, if you wanna count from the first date, then today would actually be a pretty good day to make plans because then our first date can be Wednesday.”
“First date...” Chuck said, and this time there was hope to the repetition. “You’re...” Well, clearly he wasn’t upset by Chuck’s admission. “...interested?”
“Well, duh.” Joe laughed. “I've been into you since we met at Bull's birthday party but Babe said you don't let your friends set you up so I had to get to know you some other way, then I was going to make a move but Speirs said I’d better think hard about if I was serious before I said you, and well... Speirs...”
Chuck nodded. When Ron said things like that he always managed to be more than vaguely threatening. “So moving in here was you thinking about your options?” he hazarded.
“I really did need to move,” Joe said. “And I figured since it’s your name on the lease it wouldn’t be that awkward if I hit on you because you could always just kick me out and find another roommate.”
“But you didn’t...”
“Of course I did.
Did you think I’d been walking around with my shirt off so much for no reason?” Joe asked. “It gets fucking freezing in here, even with the heat up.”
Huh. So Chuck’s improbable deliberate seduction theory was actually correct. Well, that was something. “Still, you never actually made a move.”
“You seem like the kind of guy who cares what his friends think,” Joe said. “And anytime I was about to go for it, somebody would come up with another reason I couldn’t. I was kind of expecting to be asked for a reference list next. Or possibly to assigned a quest to complete."
Ah. That made a certain sort of sense. Ron was a great best friend but he tended to scare of, well, everybody. And the rest of Chuck's friends weren't much better when they put their minds to it.
“For future reference,” Chuck said. “You probably shouldn’t take anything they say too seriously.”
“So if Malarkey had mentioned that I shouldn’t kiss you until at least the second date...?”
“Ignore that,” Chuck said.
Joe did.