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i. june — the compressor
The air conditioner compressor was broken again, which meant the back room was approximately the temperature of a moderately ambitious sauna, which meant Sam had taken his vest off forty minutes ago and Shane had been making a dedicated project of not noticing.
"Okay, but why is it always the AC," Sam said, from where he was sprawled across two folding chairs, one arm thrown over his eyes. "Like specifically. What did we do."
"You personally? Probably something involving a skateboard and someone else's property."
"That was one time."
"You told me about it for forty-five minutes."
Sam grinned without moving his arm. "You listened for forty-five minutes."
Shane didn't have an answer for that, so he didn't give one. He ate another pepper jack cracker from the sleeve he'd taken from receiving — technically theft, technically not caring — and stared at the inventory spreadsheet that had stopped making sense an hour ago.
The thing about Sam, Shane had learned over eight months of shared shifts and shared misery, was that he didn't take silence personally. Most people did. Most people read Shane's silences as hostility and responded in kind, which was fine, which was usually what he wanted. Sam just... existed in the silence alongside him, comfortable as a cat, until he had something to say.
It should have been annoying. Shane had tried to find it annoying. He'd had real commitment to the project.
"I've been working on something," Sam said, to the ceiling.
"Good for you."
"A song. About being stuck somewhere you don't want to be." A pause. "Not sad. More like — the weird peace of it, sometimes. You know?"
Shane looked up from the spreadsheet. Sam still had his arm over his eyes, but his mouth had gone somewhere softer, more uncertain. Like he wasn't sure if he was saying too much.
"Yeah," Shane said. "I know."
Sam moved his arm. Looked at him. The break room light was the bad kind, the kind that made everyone look slightly post-mortem, but Sam's eyes were warm in it anyway.
"I'm going to do something," Sam said, "and I want you to tell me if it's stupid."
"Most things you do are—"
Sam crossed the three feet between the folding chairs like it was nothing, and Shane had exactly enough time to register what was happening before Sam's mouth was on his— careful and questioning, giving him every possible exit.
Shane didn't take any of them.
He kissed back with his hand finding the back of Sam's neck, and Sam made a small sound that went straight through him like a current.
They broke apart slowly. Sam stayed close, forehead nearly against Shane's.
"Not stupid?" Sam asked, a little unsteady.
Shane's heart was doing something embarrassing. "I didn't say that."
Which was not a no, and Sam— infuriatingly, perfectly— knew the difference.
The store intercom crackled. Cleanup needed, aisle four.
"That's you," Shane said.
"It's definitely you."
They argued about it all the way to aisle four.
Shane didn't make it into a thing. He decided that, clearly, on the walk over.
He was not going to make it into a thing.
ii. july — inventory night
Three weeks.
They hadn't talked about it for three weeks, which was fine. That was a choice Shane had made, actively, on the walk from the break room to aisle four. This was the one thing in his life that wasn't terrible right now — this job he hated with this person he'd somehow started depending on — and he was not going to wreck it by making it a thing.
So. Business as usual. They bickered about aisle assignments. Sam showed him seventeen seconds of a song on his phone that was actually good and Shane didn't say so.
Except Sam had started looking at him differently. Or maybe he'd always looked at him like that and Shane had just learned how to read it.
Tonight was inventory night. The store was closed, just the two of them, and the compressor was working but it was still hot because it was the first real week of summer and the back room faced west and collected heat like a hobby.
Sam had his vest off again.
Shane was cataloguing frozen goods and making a very adult effort to look at the clipboard.
"Seventy-two," he said.
"Seventy-two." Scratch of pen. "Shane."
"Forty-one."
"I know, I wrote it." A beat. "Are we going to talk about it."
"Talk about what."
The silence that followed was the specific kind that meant Sam was deciding whether to push. Shane had a whole architecture of deflection ready. Except Sam didn't push. He went quiet. Shane heard him set the pen down.
He looked up.
Sam was leaning against the shelving unit with his arms crossed and his jaw doing the thing it did when he was trying not to say too much — this thing Shane had noticed, catalogued, that he definitely wasn't supposed to have noticed. His hair was stupid. He'd grown it out since winter and it curled at the back of his neck in the heat.
"I think about it," Sam said, finally. "I'm not good at pretending. You know that about me."
He did. He knew that about him, knew Sam's whole face like a document he'd read too many times. And he'd still spent three weeks demanding the pretending anyway.
He set the clipboard down.
"Shane?" Sam said, uncertain.
Shane crossed the room. Watched Sam's breath catch. Sam's back met the shelving unit and then there wasn't any distance, Shane's hand braced above his shoulder against the metal shelf, and he kissed him with none of the carefulness of last time.
Sam's hands came up immediately — one fisting in Shane's shirt, one sliding up the back of his neck — and he kissed back like he'd been waiting, like three weeks had been pressure and this was the release valve, his mouth opening under Shane's warm and certain.
It was longer. Deeper. Shane's free hand found Sam's jaw and neither of them surfaced for air until they had to.
Sam's head fell back against the shelf. Eyes closed. His mouth looked wrecked and Shane was not prepared for how he felt about that.
"Okay," Sam said, to the ceiling.
"Yeah."
"So." He opened his eyes. Found Shane still close, not retreating, and something in his expression went careful and relieved. "We're not pretending."
"Apparently not."
"You're going to try to pretend again tomorrow."
It wasn't a question, which was fair. "Maybe."
"Okay." Sam's thumb had moved to Shane's collar. "I'll be here."
They still had thirty units of hash browns to count.
They counted them.
iii. september — a bad night
Shane came in twenty minutes late, which meant he'd been standing in the parking lot for twenty minutes, which Sam had clocked through the window but hadn't said anything about because Shane would hate that he'd noticed.
He came in smelling like he'd had a drink before his shift. Not drunk, not even close — Shane-drunk had a specific look that Sam had learned the way you learned a weather system, by watching it come in off the horizon. This was just the smell of someone who'd needed the edge taken off before they could stand to be around people.
Sam said nothing. He handed Shane the clipboard and took the freezer units without discussing whose rotation it was.
They worked in silence for almost an hour. The real kind of silence, not the comfortable kind — the kind with weight in it. Sam was aware of Shane the way he was always aware of Shane, this low-frequency attention he'd stopped trying to explain to himself, and he could feel the weight getting heavier as the hour went on.
The store closed at nine. At nine-fifteen, Morris did his walkthrough and left. At nine-twenty, Sam went to the back room to start breaking down the returns, and Shane followed him without being asked.
Sam was halfway through the first box when Shane said, "My aunt called."
Sam set the box cutter down.
"Okay," he said, carefully.
"She just — she does this thing where she calls to check in, and it's—" Shane stopped. His jaw tightened. He was staring at the middle distance somewhere to Sam's left and doing the thing where he was angry at himself for starting to say something. "It's fine. She means well."
"But it's not fine."
"I said it's fine."
"Shane."
"Sam." He said it like a warning. But he didn't leave.
Sam crossed to the other side of the room, to the spot under the bad fluorescent light where they always seemed to end up, and sat down on the edge of the break table. He didn't try to close the distance. He just sat there, existing in Shane's orbit, the way he'd learned.
After a moment, Shane sat down too.
He didn't say anything else about the call. Sam didn't ask. They sat there in the heat and the hum of the compressor and Sam thought about the song he'd played Shane back in July — about the weird peace of being stuck — and thought that maybe that wasn't the right word. Maybe it wasn't peace. Maybe it was just the thing that happened when someone sat with you in the stuck place instead of asking you to move.
He didn't know how long they sat there.
He became aware, slowly, that Shane was looking at him. Not at the middle distance. At him.
"What," Sam said.
"Nothing." Shane's voice had lost some of its edge. "You're just — you don't have to stay in here."
"I know."
"The returns aren't going to—"
"Shane." Sam met his eyes. "I know."
Something shifted in Shane's face. Small, controlled, the way all of Shane's shifts were — like a man who'd learned to keep his seismic activity internal. He looked at Sam for another moment and then he was leaning, slowly, without any of the urgency of before, and Sam met him halfway without thinking.
It was different. That was the thing.
Same mouth, same warmth, same hand coming up to Sam's jaw — but slower, like something being set down instead of taken. Sam's hand found Shane's wrist, not pulling him in, just holding on, and Shane's breath came out unsteady against his mouth.
They kissed like that for a long time. Gentle and a little desperate in the way that had nothing to do with heat.
When Shane pulled back, he didn't go far. His forehead dropped against Sam's. His eyes stayed closed.
"Okay," Shane said, low, like he was answering a question neither of them had asked.
"Yeah," Sam said.
They finished the returns. Shane walked to his truck and Sam walked to his bike and they didn't talk about it.
But Sam thought about it the entire way home. The weight of Shane's wrist in his hand. The way his breath had come out.
Okay like something decided. Like something surrendered to.
He didn't sleep well. But it wasn't a bad kind of sleepless.
iv. october — morris
The thing about Morris, Shane had always thought, was that the man moved silently for someone who took up so much room. Fourteen years of Jojamart shifts and he still materialized at the end of aisles like a middle-management apparition.
Tonight Shane was not thinking about Morris at all.
He was thinking about Sam's mouth, which was currently doing something complicated near the corner of his jaw, because somehow — in the two minutes since they'd gone to the back room to get more register tape — something had taken a turn, and Shane had his back against the shelving unit now, which was new.
"You had tape," Shane said. "In your hand."
"I had tape," Sam agreed, against his jaw.
"That was the thing we came back here for."
"Uh-huh."
"Sam—"
"Do you want me to stop?"
Shane's hands, which had been at his sides for approximately three seconds while he made his very reasonable point about the tape, moved to Sam's hips without his full authorization.
"No," he said.
Sam kissed him properly then, unhurried, thorough, and Shane had been actively resisting the word comfortable for four months now but that was what this felt like — not frantic, not uncertain, just the easy fit of something that had been practiced without quite being acknowledged. Sam's hands were on either side of him on the shelf and Shane's fingers had found a belt loop—
The door swung open.
They didn't spring apart so much as they imploded — Shane back flat to the shelf, Sam a sharp full step to the left, both of them looking at exactly opposite walls when Morris walked in.
The silence lasted approximately one thousand years.
"Register two is out of tape," Morris said.
Sam held up the roll that had been in his hand the entire time. "On it."
Morris looked at Shane. Shane looked at the inventory sheet for register tape storage, which was not a document that existed but which he was looking for with total apparent focus.
"Hm," said Morris.
He left.
The door swung shut.
Sam let out a long breath that was almost a laugh. "Okay. That was—"
"Don't." Shane pushed off from the shelf. Straightened his vest.
"Shane—"
"That was nothing. He didn't see anything."
Sam watched him. The almost-laugh had faded. "I know he didn't see anything. I was going to say that was a close call."
"It won't happen again." Shane picked up his own clipboard, not looking at him.
"Which part?" Sam said, quietly.
Shane looked up then. Sam was watching him with that patient, careful expression, giving him room the way he always gave him room. His hand was still holding the tape. His hair was curling at his neck.
Shane thought about three weeks of not talking about it. Thought about how well that had worked.
"Go give Morris his tape," he said.
Not an answer. Sam's mouth did something complicated, accepting and disappointed in equal measure, and he nodded and went.
Shane stood in the back room for a moment alone and thought about the easy fit of it. The practiced weight. The way it had taken him approximately two seconds to respond once Sam's mouth was near his jaw.
He was not making this into a thing, he reminded himself.
He returned to the floor.
v. november — just friends
It happened on a closing shift in November, three days after the Morris incident, in the specific way that terrible things sometimes happened — while Shane was in the middle of something else entirely.
He'd been in a bad headspace all shift. The kind that came from inside and had no addressable cause, which he hated, because there was nothing to fix and therefore nowhere to put it. He'd been short with Sam twice. He'd caught himself being short and overcorrected into silence, which was probably worse.
He was in the back room counting the cigarette inventory — which he didn't smoke, hadn't in two years, was still somehow always tasked with — when Sam came in for his break.
Shane heard him settle into the folding chair behind him. Heard the specific quiet that meant Sam was deciding something.
"Hey," Sam said. "So. I've been thinking."
Shane kept counting.
"I think maybe — I think I've been making this harder on you than it needs to be." A pause. Sam's voice was even, careful, like he'd been rehearsing. "I know you don't want it to be a thing. And I keep — I keep coming at you sideways about it, and I don't think that's fair, and I just wanted to say that we can stop. If you want. I won't bring it up again."
The count went sideways. Shane set the clipboard down.
He stood there with his back to Sam and thought about three weeks of not talking about it. October, inventory, the way Sam had kissed him like pressure releasing. September, the bad night, Sam just sitting there in the weight of it. He thought about the moment before Morris walked in, the casual certainty of Sam's hands on either side of him, the way he'd fit against that shelf like it was just — natural. Easy. Like they'd always been heading there.
He thought about I'll be here.
"Sam," he said.
"You don't have to—"
Shane turned around.
Sam was on the folding chair with his hands between his knees, looking at the floor. He looked up when Shane turned, and his face did something complicated — braced and open all at once.
Shane crossed the room.
He didn't stop until there wasn't space to stop, until Sam had to tip his chin up to look at him, and then he took Sam's face in both hands and kissed him with more clarity than he'd ever managed before — not heat, not desperation, not the relief-valve urgency of the second time. Something deliberate. Like a door opened from the inside.
Sam made a sound low in his throat and his hands found Shane's jacket and he kissed back with everything, the restraint of the last few minutes dissolving, and it went on long enough that they were both a little breathless when Shane finally pulled back.
Sam's eyes opened slowly. His hands were still in Shane's jacket.
"Oh," Sam said.
Shane was very close. He could feel Sam still slightly unsteady under his hands.
"I don't want to stop," Shane said.
It cost him something to say it. Sam could probably tell that it cost him something. Sam noticed everything, filed it all away with that attention that had seemed unnerving four months ago and now felt like the least alarming thing about all of this.
"Okay," Sam said. His voice was careful, like he was handling something that might startle. "That's — okay."
"I'm bad at this."
"I know."
"I'm going to keep being bad at it."
Sam's mouth curved. "Shane. I've been watching you try to talk yourself out of this for five months. I'm not operating under any illusions."
Something caught in Shane's chest. He didn't have a name for it.
"Okay," he said.
"Okay," Sam said, and pulled him back down.
They lost twenty minutes that way. When they finally surfaced, Sam laughing quietly into Shane's shoulder about something Shane had said without meaning to be funny, it occurred to Shane that he was going to have to recount the cigarettes.
He didn't mind as much as he should have.
i. december — the parking lot
It was December and the Jojamart lot was half-frozen, the kind of winter that came off the mountains with an agenda, and they were standing next to Sam's car because Sam's car was the last one in the lot and Shane had walked him to it the way he'd started doing without discussing.
This was something they'd started doing. Several things they'd started doing. Sam's hand on Shane's back on the way to the floor. Standing close enough in the break room that their shoulders touched. Shane waiting for Sam to lock up even on nights when he'd already clocked out, standing in the cold, not explaining himself.
Not a thing, Shane kept not saying.
Sam had started smiling every time he didn't say it.
Now Sam was leaning against his car door, hands in his jacket pockets, not in any hurry despite the cold. Looking at Shane with that particular look. Patient, warm, waiting for the weather.
"So," Sam said.
"So."
"You walked me out."
"The lot's poorly lit."
"It's been poorly lit for eight years." Sam was smiling. Not a big smile. Just the steady, private kind he'd started keeping around specifically for Shane. "You've never walked me out before October."
"Maybe I've become more safety-conscious."
"Shane."
"What."
"I'm going to ask you something and you're going to hate it."
Shane looked at him. The parking lot was empty, the store windows dark behind them, the mountains black against a sky doing its winter thing — purple-dark and enormous and somehow close. He'd grown up in this valley. He'd always found the winters claustrophobic, the sky too low, and standing here it just felt like cover. Like privacy.
"Ask it," he said.
"What is this?" Sam nodded between them, easy, like it wasn't anything. But his eyes were doing something careful. "Not — I don't need a speech. I don't need you to have a plan. I just want to know what you call it, in your head. When you think about it."
Shane looked at him. The cold came off the mountains and Sam waited.
He thought about the break room in June, the question in the kiss. He thought about inventory night, Sam's head against the shelf. He thought about September, Sam sitting with him in the weight of a phone call he hadn't been able to explain, not asking anything, just staying. He thought about the pull of Sam's hands in his jacket. The private smile. The way Sam said his name sometimes — Shane, just Shane — like it was a complete sentence.
He was bad at this. He'd said so. It was still true.
"I don't know what I call it," Shane said. "But I know I don't want—" He stopped. Found the thread again. "I don't want to only be doing this in the back room."
Sam went very still.
"Like," Shane continued, because apparently he was doing this, apparently this was happening in a parking lot in December, "if I'm going to be bad at this, I'd rather be bad at it somewhere other than Jojamart."
Sam exhaled slowly, like he'd been holding it.
"That is," Sam said, carefully, like he was checking the ice, "what people who are dating say."
"I'm aware."
"You're not going to walk it back?"
Shane thought about five months of walking things back. Thought about what it had cost Sam to stay patient through all of it. Thought about I'll be here.
"No," he said.
Sam looked at him for another moment. Then the smile came up — not the private one, not the careful one. The real one, the one that transformed his whole face into something almost ridiculous, bright and helpless and entirely itself.
He crossed the two feet between them and kissed Shane there, in the parking lot, in the cold, under the enormous winter sky.
Shane kissed him back with his hands cupped around Sam's jaw.
It was nothing like the back room. The fluorescent light wasn't there, the clipboard wasn't there, the plausible deniability and the folding chairs and the compressor weren't there. Just the cold and Sam's warm mouth and the particular feeling of a door that kept swinging open finally, deliberately, held.
"Okay," Sam said, against his lips. "So we're doing this."
"Apparently."
"You're still going to be annoying about it."
"Almost certainly."
"Good." Sam's hands were in his jacket, thumbs hooked over his lapels, grinning close up. "I've gotten used to it."
Shane looked at him. The smile, the cold-flushed cheeks, the patience that had somehow outlasted everything Shane had thrown at it for five months.
He felt the seismic thing. He let it stay felt.
"Yeah," he said. "Me too."