The very same short, scrawny looking fella who'd nearly desiccated himself in my presence was standing there with sunken eyes and an expression that only someone who'd just finished an eighteen-hour shift could wear. Even yet, he was smiling and nodding to something his friend was saying to him. Nothing, not even his personal mummification, could keep him from providing his friend with his complete and full attention.
'What a trooper.' I thought to myself.
His eyes turned and met mine as if my staring had somehow signaled processors in his brain to display a notification icon in his real-world heads-up display. He smiled even wider, politely dismissed himself, and came walking... no, shambling, over to me.
Upon arrival, he wrapped his arms around me and held me in the tightest hug a complete stranger shouldn't give.
"You are ok!" he exclaimed mutedly, slightly muffled by my shoulder.
'What the fuck is happening.'
Today might've been even weirder than yesterday, although, the reassurance and comfort I found in his embrace surprised me. It was like I could sense little waves of safety cells being passed through his nervous system and across the dermal membranes of our minor skin contact. I relaxed into it rather than tensing.
"Have you seen Levi anywhere?" I asked.
"Not today, yet, no," he replied, "He mentioned that he was mostly free today though and only had a single meeting with his academic advisor.
It was all that I needed to hone in and triangulate to his location.
"I'm so glad you didn't go to Hell, Jasper," he continued, completely unprompted, "Levi was freaking the fuck out yesterday."
"WHAT?!" my voice sprang out of itself, startled by the interjection and projecting rudely out into the ambience of independent student study. I quieted my voice immediately, "How do YOU know about that?"
"Well, Levi told me about it," he stated, nonchalantly, "he said that unless you had a certain amount of... well... you know."
The awkward pause in between as Jesse's face begged me to fill in his gap here was silently blaring.
"Sex fluids, man," he finally got around to it, "that your soul was gonna end up in Hell for eternity."
"Ok, but WHY did he tell you that?" I asked, even more irritated and confused than before.
Nobody but the two of us had known what was at stake and a major part of me preferred it that way. I didn't feel comfortable having just any Joe Schmoe running around knowing that I was quite possibly a few orgasms away from eternal damnation. Jesse looked even more puzzled now.
"He and I used to date," he admitted, "I'm not really all that into girls much, but when he told me how much you meant to him, I couldn't help but get..."
He cut off his own words and grew pale in the face. I'm not sure what was more revealing, the stupid star dazzled look of accidental disclosure across his face or his actual sentence.
'Etymology and language sure are a bitch, huh?'
I chuckled to myself at the thought which seemed to ease some of Jesse's negative emotions that were starting to surface. My mind was racing at the prospect of Levi and I together. I'd never even given him the time of day as a result of his emotive hetero signaling he was constantly doing. I never would have suspected in a million years that Levi was gay, but reidentifying the way in which he shut down completely when Jackie had confronted us completely recontextualized everything I thought I knew about Levi.
'Outted by sex demons.' I continued to laugh, much more deeply this time.
I was beginning to approach the event horizon for uncontrollable mania. What a way to be dragged out of the closet. I just imagined him, butt ass naked being dragged out of a family home walk-in closet by the three Succubi that visited me in the bathroom yesterday. Then came the spaghetti code.
My laughter ripped out of my stomach, up through my lungs, and I began to screech a terribly authentic laugh I'd never heard myself make before. No amount of personal discipline could stop my demeanor from disheveling into absolute madness. I laughed, I gasped, and I cried; nearly collapsing over myself in the process.
What was happening to me? Liquid crystals coated my eyelids from their interior spouts and dimples formed like canyons across my cheeks. Part of this was from the sheer absurdity of the situation, but another part of this outburst felt like it was leftover stress residue from being completely out of control of things yesterday. Perhaps the most humorous was the image of Levi's stoic composure crossed against this alternative version that was kicking and screaming not to be dragged into the pot at the end of his rainbow.
By God, was that a golden image! 'To Hell with Golden Pigs, all hail the Golden Gay!'
But my cacophony of titters and glee were being replaced with the biological reflexes to keep one's lungs from collapsing and I had begun my recovery process. Jesse had sat me down into a nearby chair in the process and was now looking at me entirely unsure of what to say or do and with little to no regard for what warranted such a reaction.
Not only that, but a few of the professors had gathered round to assess my situation.
"I'm good! I'm good!" I declared through intermittent wheezing, standing up and grabbing Jesse's hand to sprint out the doors.
There would be time to catch up and I could continue to investigate Jesse and Levi's connections further, but the most important thing was securing that dumb little neon sex card before anyone else could get their hands on it. Now that I knew exactly where Levi would be, the three gay amigos could go on the queer adventure of a lifetime finding it.
'Go get yours.' reverberated again and again through my mind.
I suppose it had been permission for him to make a move on me. ME. Of all people. Not Jackie, not Gabe. ME.
My funny bone was trickling its way back up my throat at all the missed signals and every time I'd admired a body around me, but never once Levi's.
'Maybe it was the glasses. Some Clark-Kent-type superpower shit.'