Story of hearts(SMUT)

Love is in the air...or is that the smell of sex?

Zay receives some strange looks, walking into the filthy, monotonous garage with his bright, color-blocked hoodie with the giant smiley face in the center, carrying two condensating iced coffees. He simply smiles back at them, beelining for the noticeable orange jumpsuit, legs sticking out from the bottom of a jacked-up Toyota. Zay leans down, sets the coffees to the side, and tilts his head to grin widely at the small man underneath.

“Hey, gorgeous!” Zay calls loudly.

To both his embarrassment and amusement, Andrew gets startled and pops a cap off of something, spilling what looks like dark oil onto his face. Zay can’t help but laugh, even if he feels quite terrible, watching Andy struggle to pull what looks to Zay like a bedpan under where the fluid is leaking. He’s still catching his breath as his boyfriend crawls out from beneath the car, offering Zay nothing but a middle finger as he wipes his face.

“I’m sorry, Ands,” Richie chuckles, nodding apologetically at the other frowning mechanics shaking their heads at him. 

Andy huffs, managing to get most of the goop from his face. His quiff is sticking up stiffly from some oil trapped in the strands of his hair. Streaks and stains are still smeared in the lines of his grumpy face, his nose scrunched up in annoyance. Zay’s heart simply soars.

Andrew is the only employee here without a car of his own and the other mechanics are relentless about teasing him about this. How his boyfriend has to pick him up. They tease him for just about anything they can think of, scathing with resentment over his small, quiet presence in their rowdy, masculine space. He’s obviously the runt, standing at least half a foot shorter than the others, meek as all hell to boot. 

Still a bit cherub faced and wide-eyed innocent, he’s often the butt of jokes here, all at his expense. He’s had to assure Zay several times that his jokes aren’t like that, and that the ones his coworkers usually spit out are cruel and drenched with malice. Not at all playful; though they seem to be having a blast with it.

The hostile atmosphere is only exacerbated because Andy needs some minor assistance with his work. The owner of the garage was kind enough to get Andrew the bright orange coveralls, so that he would be easily noticed when he was unable to call out to inform anyone where he was, such as working beneath a car. They only had to make small adjustments; mainly consideration of his circumstances. Apparently, most of them couldn’t afford to offer such a thing. 

At one point Andy had to beg the owner to tell them to stop trying to “scare some noise out of him” at risk of giving him heart palpitations. It seemed to set Andy about three paces back in his progress. He’d get more worked up getting ready to go in, nearly to the point of quitting before every shift. Zay would remind Andy of something undeniable, something Zay had noticed right away when Andy started working: despite needing just the smallest accommodations, the five-four, silent twink was better at the job than everyone else in the goddamn shop and they all knew it. 

Zay is damn proud of him. Reminding Andy of that encouraged him to keep going, and continues to every day. The least Richie could do in return was show up looking like the most boisterous, colorful, obnoxious thing and take all the attention off Eddie while he waited for Andy to finish up a project and end his shift.

Now Andy is sitting in silent chagrin as Zay drives. He knows it’s a bad sign when Zay doesn’t offer to drive them back. Lately, Andy has been having a hard time going out, regressing a bit in his introversion. Zay never expected something like that to change completely, for Andy to suddenly become an extrovert. After all, Charlie very much prefers to stay at home with a book rather than go to a party. However, Andy had usually complained only of feeling exhausted after nights out; lately, he had been completely terrified and anxious, even sick to his stomach sometimes.

Day gently reaches over and gives Andy a couple taps on the knee.

“What’s wrong, baby doll? You seem quiet.” He sees Andy shoot him a look for the choice of words, so Zay rephrases. “You seem uncharacteristically unenthused about going home, which is like, your favorite place.”

Zay watches carefully, side-eyeing Andy’s hand movements as he signs back to Zay; he completely ignores Andy’s comment.

Need to work on your car. Oil is black.