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Jake Williams was exhausted.
The brunette had had classes the entire day, and afterwards a few students from his math class had wanted to talk about their grades, so the 29 year old had to stay behind, and in the rush to get home, he forgot to take some papers for his history class he still had to grade with him.
Now add the stress of teacher-conferences about the finals and brown eyes onto all of that, and you have yourself a Jake.
So here he was, at 6:46 pm, walking through the dead school building, just to retrieve some stupid quizzes.
Or what should have been a dead building, because when he opened the door to the teachers-lounge, the room wasn‘t illuminated by the street lanterns outside the windows, but instead one of the table lamps, placed on one of the three round tables scattered across the room.
Sitting at. The table, now looking up at Jake, was Lenny Stryder, who taught english and italian.
Quickly recovering from the surprise of someone else being here, Jake fully stepped into the room, closing the door behind him.
„Hey.“, Lenny offered a small smile as a greeting.
„Hi.“, Jake said, taking a better look at the other.
The 28 year old looked a bit tired and worn out, probably for similar reasons as Jake. His dirty blonde hair looked ruffeled, as if he had been running his hand through it repeaditly without actually trying to fix it. A pair of headphones hung around his neck, quietly playing soft music in the silence. The red flannel Lenny had worn just a few hours earlier was draped over the chair he was sitting on, leaving him in a grey T-shirt.
Looking at the table Lenny was sitting at, Jake realised that the other had been grading papers before he was interrupted.
The brunette looked back up at his blue eyes, and then at the clock that was hanging above the windows behind Lenny.
6:48 pm.
„Isn‘t it a bit late for you to be here?“, Jake asked, earning a small chuckle from the other man.
„I could ask you the same thing.“, Lenny countered.
Jake hummed in amusement.
„You should head home, don‘t you think?“, He asked.
„I can‘t.“, Lenny sighed, „I have to finish these, I promised they would get them back tomorrow.“ He gestured at the papers laying in front of him.
Jake huffed as he made his was to the wall to his left, towards where his cabinet was.
„Alright.“, He said, unlocking the door and puling the stack of papers that he had forgotten out, together with a red pen.
After making sure that he had locked the door again, he made his way over to the chair next to Lenny, who was looking at him with a sort of confused curiosity.
„What are you doing?“, He asked, confusion now evident in his voice, as Jake pulled out the chair to sit down.
„If i can‘t convince you to go home, I will keep you company,“, He answered.
„Oh.“, Lenny said, looking back at the papers. „Okay.“
Paying no mind to the fact that the blonde looked a little flustered when he looked away, Jake started with the first quizz on the stack.
After having worked through the first few papers, he noticed that Lenny had paused his music, that had still been silently playing out of his headphones until now.
Not feeling the need to say anything, he simply continued underlining mistakes and commenting on something here and there.
The two men worked like that for a while, the comfortable silence only broken by a passing car every now and then and the scratching of pens on paper.
The brunette was finished one hour and eleven minutes later, placing the last paper where he had started stacking the ones he had already graded.
Looking over at Lennys work, he saw that he still had two papers he needed to grade, even though he had started long before Jake. Probably because he‘s grading english exams and I was grading history quizzes. Jake thought to himself.
Allowing his gaze to drift, Jake let himself look at the features of his coworker.
He let himself observe how Lenny furrowed his brows when he noticed an obvious mistake, the blondes mouth pulling into a slight frown every now and then. He noticed Lennys long lashes that seemingly framed his blue eyes perfectly. He looked at the others strong jawline and straight nose, looked at a a strand of hair that had fallen out of place.
Jakes eyes widened for a quick moment, as realisation hit him.
Jake wasn‘t stupid. He had figured out that he wasn‘t straight early on, he just never really caught feelings a lot and therefor never really thought about it before now.
Before now
Suddenly he was able to name that feeling that he had always felt when Lenny and him talked during breaks or after school. That feeling when Lenny looked at him with those sky blue eyes, or when he hugged him as a greeting. That feeling that was the same one as when he was still in school as a student, and had been planning on asking someone out for the first time.
Holy shit
Just as that moment of self discovery ended, Lenny looked up at Jake.
They held eye contact for what felt like Hours to Jake, during wich he was able to determine that, yes, he definetly had a crush.
But even after that realisation, he couldn‘t bring himself to look away. It was like Lenny had captured his gaze witch his gorgeous eyes.
Just then, Lenny tilted his head a little to the side, and fuck, that‘s cute.
Finally having regained the ability to look away, Jake cleared his throat and looked at the clock above the door. 8:14 pm. If he had been in any other situation, he probably would have questioned why there are two clocks in one room, but right now all he could ask himself was, did I really look at him for seventeen minutes?
He was shaken out of his thoughts by the rustling of paper, and looking back at at Lenny confirmed his suspicion that he had finished grading his papers aswell, and was now packing everything in his bag.
Jake straightened his own stack of papers as he stood up, before putting them under his arm, as he didn‘t bring a bag. After all he only expected to get the quizzes and drive back home.
He pushed his chair in while Lenny stood up and grabbed his flannel from the back of his seat to put it on again.
Why does it feel like he just now realised how tall the other actually was?
Lenny was almost one and a half heads taller than him. Why did the thought of that make him feel warmth creeping up his neck?
The brunette waited for his friend (crush?) to pick up his bag and sling it over his shoulder, before he started making his way towards the door.
Slowing down when Lenny turned the lamp off to get used to seeing in the dark again was apparently all the time the taller needed to catch up with Jake, who had already opened the door to the hallway.
They walked the way back to the main entrance in comfortable silence, even though Jakes thoughts were anything but quiet.
You couldn‘t blame him, after all he just discovered that, not only was he bi or something like that, but also that he had a crush on his friend and coworker.
Had he not just realized that, he would probably be questioning the fact that every silence the two of them seemed to find themselves in was comfortable.
Pulled out of his head by Lenny holding the door to the outside open for him, he decided that he should probably focus on the here and now.
Leaving the building, Jake shuddered a little at a cold evening breeze.
He turned around in time to see Lenny locking the door behind himself, and then turn around and look at him.
Looking into those eyes again, now with the knowledge of why he felt the way he felt, seemingly made him forget he was supposed to be cold. Lennys eyes looked so beautiful, he could get lost in them for hours if given the opportunity.
Busy with being starstruck, Jake failed to notice that Lenny had taken a step towards him and was now basically standing directly in front of him, only snapping out of it when he could feel the others warm breath on his lips.
Shocked that they were so close to each other, Jakes eyes switched from looking at those blue eyes to looking at the others lips and back.
„Can I?“, the taller of the two whispered.
Not trusting his voice, the brunette nodded , just enough to get the message across.
He closed his eyes as the blonde closed the distance left between them and softly brought their lips together.
While the kiss was a short one, it was definetly more than pleseant. He couldn’t say that it was better than he imagined kissing the other would be like, as he had only just come to the realisation that he liked him and therefor not gotten to those thoughts quite yet, but he enjoyed it nontheless.
The pulled apart, and Jake looked in those sky blue eyes again. If it was possible, they had just gotten even more gorgeous.
He doesn‘t now what made him do it, but for some reason, still looking into the others eyes, Jake stood on his toes going in for another kiss, this one lasting longer than the first one by alot.
Instead of seperating for the sake of seperating, this time they were forced to by their need to breathe.
After having caught their breath and staying in silence for a little longer, Lenny spoke: „Let‘s get coffee together tomorrow.“ „That would be nice.“ Jake said, still looking in the others eyes. „I‘ll see you then.“ The blonde said with a smile, before going down the steps of the entrance and disappearing into his car.
Still standing on the top of the steps to the entrance, Jake tried and failed to keep the heat from spreading to his cheeks, as he realised what had happened.
On this single day, he forgot some quizzes at school, wich lead to him realising a crush, and then immedeatly proceeded to kiss said crush, not once but twice, and then got a date for the next day.
Looking back at it he felt anticipation for the what the next day had in store for him.