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"Eric, are we being too intimate?"
Eric scoffed.
"No, I mean it. Look at us! I don't think roommates normally shower together."
Jack turned to face Eric, interrupting him from soaping Jack's back.
Eric seemed skeptical.
"We'd be late for creative writing if we didn't. Not our fault we have the same class in the morning."
"Maybe we wouldn't have overslept if you hadn't insisted on watching 'The Nightmare on Elm Street' late into the night and then crawled into my bed for safety."
"Uh, excuse me! You owe me for saving you from that witch and you know it. Protecting me from Freddy Krueger is the least you can do."
Defeated, Jack turned back around to allow Eric to finish with his back. He was pretty sure they were about to run out of hot water anyway and the class was imminent, so he figured they should get a move on.
He wasn't quite done with the topic at hand, though, especially when not 5 minutes later he heard Eric holler:
"Jackie! What should I wear?"
He entered Eric's room to find his boxer-clad roommate staring at his open closet with a lost look on his face.
Jack rolled his eyes and pushed Eric aside to rummage through the hangers. There was a time when Jack used to complain that he wasn't Eric's mom, but honestly, this was faster.
"The clean T-shirts are in the top drawer of the dresser. Grab one, and put this on top. It's supposed to be cold today."
He handed Eric a grey sweater with a white and black horizontal stripe. It felt nice and soft thanks to the fabric conditioner Eric started using at the advice of some girl he'd met in the laundry room.
After the rough start Eric had when first faced with the prospect of washing his own clothes, he had improved by leaps and bounds. To the point when Jack now trusted him with his own clothes, happily trading the trips to the basement, where the building's laundry room was, for folding and putting away the baskets of warm, clean clothes Eric would bring back.
"The trousers are in the second drawer. The color won't matter, just grab whichever ones you like. I'm making breakfast."
He left Eric to get dressed and headed to the kitchen. He grabbed two bowls, filled them with cereal, then poured in the milk.
Eric emerged just as Jack dropped spoons into the bowls.
"Ooh, my favorite!" Eric grabbed one of the bowls and started munching while making happy noises.
Jack couldn't help smiling at his antics, even if it made eating his own cereal messy. However, after a few minutes he couldn't help but broach the subject again.
"So, I overheard a few guys in the student union referring to us as a gay couple."
Eric's eyes grew wide while he hastily swallowed his current mouthful.
"Why would we be gay? We talk about girls all the time!"
That was certainly true. Still, Jack would have preferred to maybe stop talking so much and actually start doing, as it were. Could he really blame other students for assuming if he was only ever seen around the campus with Eric? Also:
"And the lady at the registrar said that I'm such a caring boyfriend when I handed in your paperwork for the next semester."
Eric's eyes softened.
"Thanks for doing that, man. They were on my back so much about filling it all wrong the last time. You really are the best boyfriend."
He gave Jack the warm smile that never failed to make Jack's chest feel all tight and glowing. It was almost enough to distract him from the subject at hand.
"Wait! No! See, that's what I'm talking about! I'm not your boyfriend!"
Eric frowned.
"Girlfriend?"
He withered under Jack's glare.
"Roommate! There! We're just roommates!" Eric put away his and Jack's bowls, and grabbed his books and the car keys. "Totally platonic!"
Platonic, yeah. Jack could live with that.
And then he thought again about the last half an hour, since waking up as the classic "big spoon" with his face buried in Eric's hair, up to now.
"I don't think that word means what you think it means..." he said weakly, grabbing his own books and following Eric out of the door.