A long, long time ago, @suedescripture sent me a prompt regarding sexually-inexperienced!Zach, and after a million years and a million false starts, I’ve finally got enough of a handle on it to start posting this thing. I have five chapters fully written, which should give me enough of a headstart to keep on top of this, fingers crossed. I hope you all enjoy! <33
Zach is pushing 30, his career is at a standstill, and his sex life is–and has always been–nearly nonexistent. He doesn’t have much to be happy about, until he is welcomed into a group of actors who call themselves the Grimy Corp.
Zach turns to Chris framed in the doorway. Chris’s backyard is spacious but essentially fortified. What he should have done was go out the front door, call a lyft, get himself a hotel room.
“Zach?” Chris stepped through the door, closing it behind him. Guarding the exit. No way out but the confrontation.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were dating guys?”
Chris’s eyes stare, drop momentarily, and then return, on the defensive. “I didn’t…” his hand comes up to scratch at the back of his neck, “I didn’t think you… ever wanted to know. I should have told him not to mention it.”
Zach boggles, astonished, “Why would you even think I didn’t want to know?”
Chris sighs heavily, crossing his arms, “I dunno, Zach. Any time I dated a woman, you disappeared. I wouldn’t see you.”
“We were apart, or working—”
“Yeah, or you just didn’t want to spend time with straight people, and bi people seem a bit off-color in your crowd too. I can’t believe you asked him if it was practice for the role.”
“I didn’t—”
“Going method? That’s what you said.”
“Well, were you?”
“Have I ever?” Chris’s face is foreboding in the dim.
Zach huffs and turns back to face the low-lit garden, hiding his embarrassment. “How long?”
“How long what?” Chris asks. “How long did I date him, how long since I dated him, or how long have I been bi? Goes something like six months, three years, and forever.”
Zach deflates. For years, he’d run away from it. Stepped back anytime Chris dated, pretended he didn’t see what he thought he saw, up and moved to keep himself from wanting what he couldn’t have. Now here he was, back in LA, house hunting, crashing in Chris’s guestroom and discovering ex boyfriends he hadn’t known about.
“Anyway it’s not like we would’ve…” Chris says and doesn’t finish.
It stabs him in the heart. Wouldn’t we have? He wants to say. Couldn’t we have? “I…” he tries. “I suppose not.”
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