NSFW (MxM) ✓

• 02

It's Monday and I still have literal whiplash from the events of this weekend. My two day hangover ended, thankfully, but I still feel like shit. I'm now openly gay, though I haven't told anyone because it isn't important to anyone. Ross sits across me, napping. The way he put it, he's using both of his 15 minute breaks and both of mine to sleep for an hour, since he had a long weekend of drinking and hooking up. I don't know how he does it. Oh wait, he doesn't do it, he does it and fails.

"Hey, Ben!" Calvin says as he comes by our desks. Then he chuckles as he sees Ross asleep and drooling into a blank piece of copy paper.

"Hey, Cal," I respond cheekily, not taking my eyes off of Ross's ugly head. I wish he was ugly, but Ross is hot. Good thing he's straight as an arrow, otherwise I might be into him. That same fact didn't seem to stop me from crushing hard on my boss.

"Ross! I'm not paying you to sleep, man." Calvin continually scolds him and Ross moans for Cal to leave him alone. I hit print on a finance report and head to the copy room to retrieve it. The room is full of giant, oversized machines that are way outdated. I find the usual machine I send to, since the rest of them have shitty ink output, and make sure I only get pages from my stack. I turn quickly to exit and end up clashing with a coworker. After losing all my papers in the air, landing on my ass, and rubbing my forehead in pain, I look up to see who knocked me down.

"Ti–Timothy?"

"Sorry about that," he says and holds his hand out for me, squinting his eyes shut in embarrassment. He then opens his eyes and realizes it was me. "Benjamin?"

"It's okay," I say, taking Timothy's hand and lifting from the ground. When I release my grip, he doesn't for a moment, then becomes flustered and drops it quickly. He then shakes his head hard and begins picking up my papers for me. I help of course, I'm not a diva. Once we've gotten almost every paper, I reach for the last one at the same time as him and he puts his hand on mine.

"Uh, hi," he struggles. I remove my hand and allow him to grab the page just to hand it to me anyway. I smile and walk out of the room with my papers in hand, and he probably just gawked as I walked out. I don't want to talk about Friday night, and I just know he is going to bring it up. This is the first time I've ever seen him at work, I'm creeped that he somehow ran into me (literally) for the first time after we met somewhere else.

"Benjamin!" he calls after me. As I'm walking toward my desk, I see Ross and Cal take notice at his loud voice calling for me. I internally groan and give them a roll of the eyes, turning around to Timothy.

"What's up?" I say nonchalantly.

"I, uh... Are you okay? Since Friday?" he asks, concerned about me. My expression softens. I thought he was going to hit on me or something, but he's concerned.

"Yeah, I'm doing fine, thanks. I'm sorry everything was cut short the other night. I didn't have a good day Friday."

"No sweat, we all have those days... Listen. I know we barely talked, but I really would like to get together, maybe for a real... date?" This isn't the same guy as Friday night. He's actually more timid now than outgoing. That might've been the alcohol talking for him.

"Yeah, that'd be great," I actually go for it, honestly surprising myself. I need to make up for lost time and have some fun, so this is a possible way I can. His face lights up, as much as someone can at 9 AM. "I'll give you my number and we can talk later, okay?"

"Y-yeah, sure," he laughs nervously and smiles. I know it must be new for him to ask guys out, but it's new to me to get asked out. Even though I'm very introverted, nervous and awkward, I can usually handle social confrontations well. Unless I'm around Calvin, but I've got to push that hunk to the back of my mind. Once we've exchanged numbers, he takes a longing look into my eyes before smirking and stepping away, sending a small wave. I wave back and head over to my own workspace.