What the hell was Kris doing? This was a terrible idea. And yet here he was, waving his mom goodbye as she drove away from the curb. He walked up to Remi’s front door with a pounding heart and dry mouth.

Remi had a house. A real, two-story house with front and back yards. There was a damn mailbox out by the sidewalk. This was actual grown-up shit.

Kris knew not to look a gift horse in the mouth. The truth was, his mom had purposefully moved into a tiny apartment as soon as Kris had moved out to save a ton on rent. Leon and Ava’s place wasn’t much bigger and their spare room had already been turned into a nursery.

Chase had begged Kris to stay with him at his house, but Kris didn’t want to intrude on his daughter Lyla’s space. In fact, several of the friends Kris now knew through Chase had offered a spare bed or a couch, but there was something holding Kris back each time.

Gabe had moved in with his boyfriend, Orion, and Kris didn’t fancy being a third wheel. Koby lived alone, but his spare room was stuffed with his metalworks projects and art supplies. Even Pete Miele, Orion’s uncle, had offered Kris a room as thanks for Kris helping him come out recently. But Pete was still going through his divorce, and even though there wasn’t anything between him and Kris, Kris didn’t want to complicate Pete’s life any more than it already was.

Remi was single and had a whole house to himself. Here, Kris would have a room of his own and Remi was insisting he just help out a little with groceries, maybe some bills, but no rent. Moving in here would mean Kris might not go totally broke while he got back on his feet.

All he had to do was act naturally around the guy he’d been pining for since he was thirteen years old. No big deal, right?

Kris rubbed his jaw and hugged his bag and Tay Tay’s Tupperware box to his chest. Along with his phone, charger and makeup bag, Kris also had a couple of Leon’s old T-shirts and a pair of his beat-up sneakers to his name. His mom had also taken him shopping for a toothbrush and deodorant. It wasn’t much, but at least Kris didn’t feel like he had nothing left in this world as he pressed the doorbell with his thumb.

This was the best option. It was sensible. Remi and he could be civil roommates, surely. He never had to know how Kris felt, and he definitely never needed to find out how many times Kris had jerked off thinking about him during high school. Kris blushed just thinking about it.

As the door rattled from the other side, Kris managed to calm down enough that he hoped he wouldn’t give himself away when he greeted Remi. “Hi,” he squeaked as the door swung inward.

“You made it,” Remi cried, pushing the screen door outward for Kris to step inside. “I mean, obviously you did, you’re here. Um, you wanna come in? Mi casa es su casa. Or it will be when I get you a key cut. I assume you’ll want a key, right?”

“Oh, sure, hon,” Kris said as he stepped in from the porch into the front room. “If that’s okay? Thank you again. I super appreciate this.”

“No sweat,” Remi said, shutting the door. “And of course it’s okay for you to have a key. I want you to feel at home. So, um, this is my place.”

He held his hand out, indicating the living room, then let it drop to his side. Kris wasn’t surprised he was kind of lackluster about his enthusiasm for the place. It didn’t seem like he had a lot of people over.

There were the furniture basics. Coffee table, a sofa and a television. But there were also several cardboard boxes tucked into corners, the curtains were half hanging off the rail and a mirror was propped up against the wall rather than hanging off a hook.

“Sorry, it’s kind of a dump,” Remi mumbled, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Oh, no,” Kris said quickly, shaking his head. “It’s totally cute. Lots of potential. When did you move in?”

“Two years ago,” Remi said with a sheepish look. “You, uh, want to see the kitchen?”

“Sure,” said Kris, quickly. Two years? The poor lamb obviously had no clue how to make a space feel cozy. “I bet working shifts makes it hard to get around to DIY.”

Remi made a noncommittal sound as Kris followed him through a door into the kitchen. “My grandfather left me and my sisters some inheritance money,” Remi explained. “I put the money toward a down payment. It’s nice to have somewhere to myself. But I’ve never really known what to do with the place.”

The kitchen walls were a garish blue color. The cabinets were white and some of them had smudges and scuffs on them. It wasn’t bad, per se. It just lacked any real personality or signs of love and care.

“You’ve got time,” Kris assured him. He felt awkward, like he was tripping over his own tongue. Ordinarily, he would skip about the place and make interior design suggestions or at least throw around a couple of playful insults. But with Remi, he felt like he was under a microscope.

For fuck’s sake. He hated reverting to this shy, insecure version of himself. Ever since he came out in the summer before his junior year at high school, he’d promised not to be this lesser model. For so long he had been too afraid of his own shadow to really live his life. He never wanted to go back to that.

But being around Remi, knowing that he had even less than usual thanks to the fire, Kris couldn’t help but feel inferior. Remi owned a house, and he had a career, not just a job. Kris’s greatest achievement was the goldfish he still had clutched to his chest.

Hopefully, once the shock of the fire wore off and he got more comfortable in Remi’s house, he could act more like himself again. He hated feeling like he couldn’t say whatever he wanted or flounce around for fear of how that would be received. As much as his other friends’ offers of a couch weren’t quite what he needed, Kris would have at least felt more comfortable living with another gay guy.

But he didn’t feel like Remi was the kind of dude to be secretly homophobic. So far, he gave off nothing but friendly, accepting vibes. Kris needed to trust that Remi would be okay with him acting like his usual self. They just needed a few days to get used to one another.

Kris placed Tay Tay’s box on the counter and his bag of possessions on one of the chairs at the kitchen table. Remi opened the fridge door.

“You want a beer?” he asked. “I’m not really hungry after the barbecue earlier, but I’ve got a few cans and some chip and dip if you’d like?”

Ah. Damn. They were at this point already. Kris tried to give Remi one of his cutsey, no-big-deal smiles he was so used to dishing out at the bar.

“Oh, no thank you, babe. I don’t drink beer.”

Remi just looked from the fridge at him, though, and gave him one of those dorky, lovely, lopsided smiles. “Oh, sure. I’ve got vodka and soda you could mix it with. Or I think Jamila got me some wine a while back.”

Kris gritted his teeth and did his best to keep smiling. “Thanks, but that’s okay. I don’t drink.”

Remi blinked at him. Kris braced himself for the usual ‘But you’re a bartender?’ line.

“Like, at all?” Remi asked. But he didn’t sound incredulous. More intrigued. “Are you teetotal?”

Kris licked his lips and tried not to get flustered. “No. I’ll have something every now and again. Not that I think there’s anything wrong with drinking. I just don’t enjoy the way alcohol makes me feel.”

Remi seemed to consider that. Then he nodded. “Cool,” he said, half smiling again as he looked inside the fridge. “Well, like I said, I have a bunch of sodas or iced tea or plain old tap water?”

Kris was momentarily stunned. Really? Remi wasn’t going to give him a hard time? “Uh, iced tea would be great.” Remi nodded and withdrew from the fridge with two bottles. “Oh, I don’t mind if you want a beer, really,” Kris said. This was one of the main things about not drinking. It always made him feel like a killjoy around other people.

But Remi threw him a strange look. Like Kris was being cute. “Nah,” he said. “I had a brew at my parents, but I’m not that big on drinking either, if I’m honest. I just tend to get involved because other people are doing it.”

Kris was genuinely at a loss for what to say at that. Remi wasn’t that into booze either?

Maybe the two of them did have something in common after all.

When Remi handed him the opened bottle, Kris managed a small thank you. Then he picked up his stuff and followed Remi back through the house to take a tour of the upstairs.

Every room was just as unloved and unfinished as the last. Kris could tell Remi was embarrassed as he showed him around. For a moment, Kris wasn’t sure which was the spare room and which was Remi’s – they were both so empty and filled with unpacked cardboard boxes.

“Sorry,” Remi mumbled as Kris placed his small bag on the sofa bed in what he finally worked out was the spare room. At least the bed had been made up with clean sheets. Remi had most likely done that while Kris had popped back to his mom’s to get his few possessions. “I don’t really have people over. I kind of didn’t realize how crappy the place looked.”

“Hey,” said Kris a little sterner than he meant to. “It’s not crappy. It’s…” He waved his hand about as he tried to think of the right word. “It’s like a caterpillar cocoon. With a bit of help it can be a beautiful butterfly one day.”

Remi smiled and placed his hands on his hips as he looked about the spare room. “Yeah,” he said with a nod. “You’re right. It could be a butterfly.”

He directed that smile toward Kris and Kris felt something flip in his chest. What the hell? Remi was just being nice, he wasn’t flirting. Kris must still be overemotional from everything. His poor heart was latching onto whatever little bit of sympathy came his way.

“Do you think I could borrow your computer at some point?” Kris asked, changing the subject and indicating the slightly beat-up-looking machine on the desk in the corner of the room. “My phone’s pretty good, but there’s some things I need to do that would be much easier with a proper keyboard.”

“Oh, sure,” Remi said. He nodded and darted over to the computer. He almost tripped on some sweatpants shoved into a pile of dirty laundry under the desk, but he managed to catch himself and style it out. Or at least he tried to. Kris was very proud of himself for not gasping too loudly. “Um, sorry,” Remi said bashfully as he dropped into a chair that didn’t look quite big enough to carry his large frame. “I forgot this was here. I’ll run around and pick up all the mess tonight.”

Kris shook his head. “Oh, honey child. Do not go to any extra trouble on my account. I am super grateful for everything you’ve done. I mean it. She is very hard to shock.”

Remi frowned at him. “She?”

Kris felt himself begin to blush in embarrassment again, but he tried not to let it show too much. “Sorry,” he said, pulling self-consciously at his brother’s baggy T-shirt. He’d at least wanted to tie the damn thing into a crop, but he was trying not to be overtly gay. He didn’t want to make anyone – namely Remi – feel uncomfortable. But the extra material felt like it was smothering Kris in that moment. “I mean me – I’m very hard to shock. It’s like a thing some guys do. Refer to themselves as ‘she.’ It’s stupid.”

He hadn’t succeeded in stopping his cheeks from going pink, he could tell.

But Remi’s lopsided grin was back as he turned on the computer. “That’s kind of cool,” he said. “Like…another persona. Oh! Like how Beyoncé is Sasha Fierce?”

Kris couldn’t stop his jaw from falling open. “You know about Sasha Fierce? Oh, baby. You just earned so many points.” Kris clicked his fingers a couple of times and grinned, his embarrassment forgotten. “There’s hope for you yet.”

Remi’s half smile became a full one. He sort of looked pleased, in a bashful kind of way. That was interesting.

The moment was interrupted as a loud thud came from downstairs. The two men frowned at each other. “What was that?” Remi asked.

Kris shrugged and followed Remi as he jogged back down to the kitchen.

Where Kris shrieked.

“Tay Tay!” he screamed, rushing forward to seize her box from where it had been knocked onto the kitchen tiles. One of the corners had come loose and the box had started leaking water. “You never said you had a cat!”

He didn’t mean to sound so accusatory as he rushed over to the faucet to refill Tay Tay’s box, but after nearly losing her once, Kris wasn’t prepared to let his baby get eaten or suffocate.

“I don’t!” Remi cried. But Kris turned and looked at the small, black cat that jumped onto the kitchen table and raised his eyebrows. “She’s not mine,” Remi spluttered. He scooped her up and hugged her to his chest, then glanced at the now open back door. “I must not have closed the door properly and she got in. But she’s not mine. Well, I guess I feed her sometimes-”

“No wonder she thought she’d found a free snack,” Kris said.

He tried to laugh, but tears were pooling in his eyes. What the fuck? It was just an accident, a misunderstanding. But after everything he’d been through, the idea that he might lose Tay Tay had pushed him over the edge and he couldn’t seem to be rational about this.

“Sorry,” he stammered. “I didn’t mean…I, uh, she’s all I’ve got left and uh-”

“No, I’m sorry,” Remi insisted. He didn’t seem to know what to do with the cat, who didn’t have a collar, Kris now noticed. Remi walked over to the back door and let her out again before closing it securely. “She’s never come inside before. I’m sure your fish will be safe.” He gave Kris an uncertain smile. “You could maybe put her in a little bowl with a shipwreck and coral and stuff.”

Kris bit his lip. “Uh, shucks. Sorry, I should have mentioned. I need to get my lil’ baby boo a new proper tank. Small bowls like that kill goldfish. Is that going to be a problem?” Fuck, he should have asked this before Remi agreed to give him his spare room.

“How big a tank?” Remi asked with a slight frown.

“Uh, a few feet long,” Kris said, embarrassed. “I’ll put it in my room and take it with me when I go. Or I guess I could see if Leon could house her-”

“No, no,” Remi said, waving his hands. “No, it’s fine. I just, uh, well I wasn’t expecting that. But it’s fine, totally. I mean, if the cat gets back in, it’ll have a much harder time getting into a tank, right?”

Kris licked his lips. “Sure,” he said. “Well, uh, I guess I’ll go back to my room and get settled and stuff.”

“Right,” Remi said, nodding. “Oh, uh, let me finish setting you up on the computer, okay?”

Kris followed him back upstairs with Tay Tay clutched to his chest. There was an awkward silence as Remi set up a new profile for him to use. Kris didn’t know what to say to make the atmosphere go away.

“There you go,” Remi said, rubbing his hands on his sweatpants as he stood up from the desk. Then he swooped down and scooped up most of the laundry he’d piled up there, leaving a couple of odd socks behind. He hugged his clothes while Kris hugged his fish box. They stared at each other. “Well, uh, goodnight,” said Remi. Then he fled the room.

Kris sighed and placed Tay Tay carefully down on the nightstand and closed the door after Remi.

This was going to be awful, wasn’t it?