"So. Are you guys together?"

John glanced up at Gerryn in irritation as he tossed another towel into the washer.

"Haven't we had this conversation already? Like, five thousands times?" He snapped.
"Yes, and you've yet to give me a straight answer." Gerryn replied evenly.

The laundromat was still and silent. Rain pattered against the dirty windows, each droplet stained gold by the streetlights outside. John had the strangest sensation that he and Gerryn were the only two people left in the city. It was a feeling that he usually enjoyed.

However, the current conversation topic, and Gerryn's refusal to drop the subject were giving them second thoughts.

"Well? John, are you or are you not Danica's boyfriend?"

John sighed, flipping a pair of boxers into the dangerously full machine. Something inside him snapped, and he found himself answering his friend.

"We don't call it that." He said quietly.
"Excuse me?"
"We don't call it that...we're not like that."
"So there is a 'we'. I suspected as much." Gerryn said wisely.
"If you already knew, then why did you have to nag me half to death with questions?"
"Because I wanted you to say it."

There was a short silence, as each boy rooted through his respective duffel bag, lobbing dirty clothes and towels into washer machines. Then Gerryn glanced over.

"So."
"So what?"
"So...details, my friend, details."

Chewing his lip, John cast about his mind for a scrap of memory to share, something that wasn't too personal, something that could encompass his relationship with Danica without transforming it into something cheap and common.

To buy himself time, he asked Gerryn, "What sort of details?"
"Oh, I don't know...what's she like, I guess. What it's like, being with her."

From the way Gerryn's voice slid over the words 'being' with her, John knew he wasn't talking about the way Danica's voice sounded when she was happy, when you could hear the smile in her voice. Or the way her eyes sparkled when she looked at him from the other side of a crowded room, or the way she'd unconciously lick her lips just before kissing him.

"It's...it's amazing. She's perfect."
"John, that's the most pathetic description of Danica I've ever heard. Come on, then, be a good lad and share some details."
"Fine. She's shy, you know. I suspect that I'm her first or some such. But when you're kissing her, when you're laying with her, it's like...it's like time stops, and all you see is her, all you know is her, and the way her lips feel on yours, the way her hands feel on your body, or the way she moves against you...Gerryn, it's just...impossible to describe. It just is."

Gerryn was quiet for a moment.

"So are you guys exclusive?"

John looked down at this now empty duffel bag, then stalked over to two washer machines, and began dumping detergent into them.

"I'll take that as a no." Gerryn said softly.
"She doesn't...she's afraid to be someone's girlfriend. I think she thinks that she'll be...less, if she belongs to someone else."
"How do you mean?"
"When we first...started this..." John closed his eyes, seeing again her face as she'd tried to explain herself to him, how her pretty eyes had filled with tears, how her hands had gripped his wrists.

"Gerryn, she said she hates how people treat their significant others, and she said that she thinks she'd be an awful girlfriend, and she said she'd feel claustrophobic and smothered after a single week, and she'd rather be free to make her own decisions, and do what she wants." John sighed. "I mean, I'm not attached either, but there's no one else I want, no part of my life I don't want to share with her. It's just that she doesn't feel the same way. I'm afraid to pressure her."

Gerryn said nothing for a moment, measuring out a precise amount of detergent before closing the lid on the washer and switching it on. John was struck by the rugged beauty of Gerryn's hands. Smudged with paint, fingernails bitten to the quick, they shouldn't have been so attractive, but they were. John supposed it was his attraction to flawed things speaking, but he thought that Gerryn's hands were beautiful, in their own right.

"I'm sorry, John."
"For what? I'm content."
"You're not. You're in love with her. And she's seeing other boys, and getting off with other boys, and it's killing you."

John gaped at his friend for a moment, mouth opening and closing wordlessly. Then he sighed.

"I suppose you're right. But there's nothing I can do, until she decides she wants to be with me, and only me."
"Good luck, mate." Gerryn told him. "You're going to need it."