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If Leo was being completely honest with himself, he’d been stalling on repairing the Sky Ninja since Christmas. He’d walked into Papa’s Donuteria, the donut store across the street from the coaster, ready to get his daily fix of donuts without making a fool of himself, and he just saw Jason, and his breath just caught in his throat, and he knew that he was screwed.
Jason was wearing a dorky red and green sweater underneath his usual blue-and-white striped apron, his donut-logo hat perched on his soft-looking blonde hair, electric blue eyes twinkling as he cheerily handed over a set of three perfectly-decorated donuts. Leo had always found Jason attractive– with a body like that, who wouldn’t?-- but this felt different, more real. It made Leo want to immediately turn around and leave, because he was a coward who had somehow hopelessly fallen in love. Or maybe love was a bit too dramatic– they talked almost daily, but it was normally about donuts and superficial things like that– but he definitely felt something . A butterflies-in-his-stomach, sweaty-palms, flushed-cheeks-when-Jason-smiled-at-him sort of something.
But Leo couldn’t make himself stay away. Not when Jason always smiled at him like that, and made sure to dump a few extra sprinkles onto his donuts, free of charge. And he especially couldn’t stay away when his job required him to spend hours at a time directly across the street from Jason.
Really, He’d taken it as a testament to his own subtlety that Piper didn’t confront him about it until Valentine’s Day, after he’d spent half the season brainstorming ways to casually ask Jason if he had a Valentine, or what gender his hypothetical Valentine could be.
Piper worked with Jason, but she was a delivery driver, which meant she’d passed Leo by countless times instead of being locked inside the brightly-decorated donuteria. Over the seasons, she’d kind of just adopted Leo like he was a stray cat off the street. Personally, Leo was glad for it, because Piper was cool and it was just another excuse to walk by the Donuteria, but Leo probably would’ve liked her a lot more if she didn’t take every opportunity she could to tease him about his crush on Jason.
“Oh my god, you’re in love with Jason!” Piper had exclaimed one day around Valentine’s Day, when snow covered every inch of grass in a picturesque sort of way. She swatted Leo on the shoulder, watching him watch Jason wistfully through the windows of the Donuteria as Leo leaned up against the cold metal supports of the Sky Ninja.
He tried to play it off, but he was pretty sure his face was a darker shade of pink than the roller coaster behind him. “Jason? What, no, he’s totally not even my type.”
Piper raised a disbelieving eyebrow. He hated how well she could read him. “So if I told you that he had a crush on someone else, you wouldn’t care?”
Leo jerked upwards so fast he almost fell over. “He does? Who?”
Piper snorted, and Leo glared at her, before turning his attention back to Jason, who looked relieved as he turned off the lights in the Donuteria. Leo wondered how he could look so painfully attractive, even after being judged by an endless stream of picky customers all day. He was covered in flour– Leo could see patches of it splashed across Jason’s arms. Wow, how far gone was Leo that he was jealous of flour?
Leo had promised Piper he’d talk to Jason, confess his feelings, slip him one of those ‘do you like me? Check yes or no’ notes like he was in middle school, the whole shebang. And he really did intend to.
But he’d shown up at the Donuteria at his normal time the next day, and Jason was flashing one of his heart-stopping smiles at some pretty brunette, and all the Piper-granted confidence from the night before had popped like a balloon.
He’d just walked in, made small talk with Jason, fell a little deeper in love, and left with his donuts without ever confessing, silently promising himself that he’d do it the next day. But then the next day passed, and he did the same thing. And the next day. And the next.
And now, the Sky Ninja was complete, and Leo didn’t have any days left. The paperwork had already been submitted to the manager at Powder Point. Seeing Jason from now on would mean buying a pass to the theme park every day, and Leo’s job as a mechanic paid well, but not that well.
Stepping into the doors of the Donuteria for the final time, Leo’s fingers were shaking and his heart was racing. Twelve months of falling in love, and it came to this: either he told Jason, or he didn’t. Either he got himself a boyfriend, or a painful and awkward rejection, or just a simple box of donuts before racing for the door like the coward he was.
“Hey, Leo!” Jason said, his whole face lighting up.
Leo flashed a smile back, hoping Jason couldn’t tell how nervous he was. “Hey, Jason, how’s it going?”
“Well, you’re here, so I can’t complain.”
Leo just wished Jason meant that.
“Do you want your usual?” Jason continued.
Leo just nodded, afraid that if he opened his mouth, a confession would come out. He leaned up against the wall, watching as Jason got started rolling out the dough, trying to work up the courage to just say it , like Piper always said, fingers drumming against his legs at the same frantic pace as his heartbeat.
He’d thought it so many times, crafting speeches in his head as easily as he crafted any of his other inventions. I like you a lot, Jason. As more than a friend. Are you free on Saturday?
Leo sighed, dragging a hand through his hair. Who was he kidding? He couldn’t even bring himself to flirt with Jason, and he flirted with everyone. But even jokingly flirting with Jason, like he did so many times with Piper, felt too vulnerable.
“Have you ever been out around Powder Point?” Jason asked, leaning up against the counter. In the back, Leo could see his donuts frying.
“Nah,” Leo said, swallowing down the pathetic ‘I’ve never had anybody I wanted to walk around with’ in favor of the much more casual reply of, “It just doesn’t seem that cool when you work there every day, you know? What about you?”
Jason shrugged, glancing down at the counter. He suddenly looked…shy, which wasn’t really an expression Leo was used to seeing. Jason was perfect, the All-American boy, right down to his toothpaste-commercial-white teeth. What did a guy like that have to be nervous about?
“Guess I’ve just been waiting on the right person to do it with.”
“Well, you’ve got a brand new coaster out there,” Leo said, forcing a grin to his face, as if the prospect of the right person being anyone other than him didn’t slice his heart right open. “Who knows? You might meet someone.”
The silence that filled the Donuteria– well, silence except for the cheerful bubbling of his donuts in the fryer– had never felt so awkward, but Leo couldn’t help the bright spark of hope that flared up in his chest. Maybe Jason already had met someone. Maybe that someone was a small Latino roller coaster mechanic who ate too many donuts, and this was all some roundabout way for Jason to ask Leo out on a date. Maybe, maybe, maybe.
“Yeah, maybe,” Jason said finally, but his smile wasn’t reaching his eyes.
The timer went off, and Jason disappeared into the back, leaving Leo alone with his thoughts, which was always a terrible idea.
Any hope of Jason making some grand, sweeping love confession had died in Leo’s chest, trampled to death by a swarm of butterflies. Jason would’ve said something, Leo was sure of it. Hell, for a minute, he’d somehow convinced himself that Jason was going to.
But he didn’t, so now Leo had pretty much two choices, the same two choices he’d had for the last twelve months: confess and get rejected, or leave with his donuts and let himself keep dreaming. As he watched Jason re-emerge from the back, Leo knew he was going to chose the latter. He was still a coward.
Jason passed Leo his donuts, perfect as always with a few extra sprinkles on top. Leo tried not to be disappointed when their fingers didn’t accidentally brush as Leo took the box.
“See you tomorrow, Leo!”
Leo froze, almost dropping his box. “I’m not coming back tomorrow.”
Jason’s friendly smile was reduced down to a concerned frown in the blink of an eye. “What do you mean?”
“I’m not coming back tomorrow,” Leo repeated. “The Sky Ninja’s done, they don’t need me anymore.”
“But…what about all the other repairs around the park? You’ll be here for those, right?”
Leo shook his head. “I don’t work for Powder Point. They just hired me to fix the Sky Ninja.”
From the look on Jason’s face, you’d think that he was being rejected by a hot guy totally out of his league. Which didn’t make sense. Leo was just Leo, not anything special.
“But I’ll see you around again, right?”
“Yeah, probably,” Leo said, but it felt like a lie, and he felt guilty for even saying it, and he still wasn’t really sure why. “Bye, Jason. It was nice getting donuts from you all these months.”
He turned to leave, the donuts suddenly feeling heavy in his hands. He didn’t really have an appetite for powdered sugar and free extra sprinkles anymore.
He didn’t get very far before he heard Jason sigh, then yell, “Leo, wait!”
And then he didn’t have very much time to stop and turn around before Jason was stepping out from behind the counter, running up to him, and pulling him into a kiss.
Leo barely even registered his donuts hitting the floor, or the feeling of flour on his skin, or, really, anything as Jason kissed him. Jason could’ve started flying and Leo wouldn’t have noticed over the soft texture of Jason’s lips against his and the fireworks shooting across his brain. It was better than Leo had ever imagined, and he would’ve thought it was a dream if not for the fact that none of his dreams had ever felt as real as this.
“Sorry,” Jason said, as soon as he pulled away.
Don’t you dare be sorry for that, Leo thought desperately.
Sheepishly, Jason looked away, his face bright pink. “I just– I promised Piper months ago that I’d tell you how I feel, and I guess I just got…desperate.”
Piper. Of course it was Piper. Leo couldn’t decide if he wanted to punch her or send her a fruit basket. “Funny, she made me promise the same thing.”
Jason’s breath hitched, and they were so close that Leo could hear it. “So you…?”
“Spent the last twelve months pining after you from afar?” Leo asked. “Yes.” He cleared his throat. “So anytime you want to kiss me again, I’m down for that.”
Jason smiled, blinding and brilliant in a way that made Leo half-convinced that Leo’s heart was going to burst out of his chest. Jason was smiling like that for him – no one else, just Leo.
“I was thinking coffee, actually. I heard there’s a new shop that opened up across the street. It could be a date. Just you and me.”
Jason actually had the decency to sound nervous , like there was any universe where Leo would turn that down.
“Okay,” Leo said, unable to stop the dopey grin spreading across his face. “I can do coffee.”