This happened around late 2020/early 2021. Although it was over a year ago and so I'm filling in some gaps in my memory generously.
I was 21 and in my junior year of college, living in a house just off campus with three other roommates. We all vaguely knew each other from high school and got along well enough, but it was a mostly surface-level arrangement. We were four STEM majors in busy semesters; schoolwork and other friends came first, so we didn't actually talk all that often.
Once COVID hit however, things changed. Two of my roommates had family they saw regularly with preexisting conditions, so we were very careful not to have anyone over, strict rules for visiting other people, no parties, etc. All of this meant that we were stuck in this box with each other 24 hours a day, every day.
We were all 20-21 years old, and after 5 months of being isolated were a bit frustrated, sexually and otherwise. The sexual part never came up in conversation, but it was well understood. I certainly was getting a little sick of trying to find off-hours times to jack off since my door didn't lock and my roommate Ted would often come in with little warning.
Despite this character flaw, Ted was my favorite roommate (shh don't tell the others!). He was a 5'10", muscular, brown haired guy, and someone I genuinely looked up. He had the highest work ethic of any person I'd ever met. He'd get up early morning each day, and never wasted a second; to this day he's the only student who I've never seen procrastinate on an assignment. I swear, the guy wasn't human. After getting his work done in the morning, he'd have plenty of time left over for his passions, one of which was preparing food that can only be described as if Gordon Ramsay could jizz gold. I frequently pestered him for more of his food, and as time went on we started spending a lot of time just the two of us in the kitchen. I always tried my best to contribute, but whenever we put our food side by side it was like looking at the before and after shot of meth addiction.
This was all still completely platonic, and while I loved spending time with him it was just as friends. I am bisexual but I don't think my roommates were really aware of it, and neither was he at the time. I wasn't hiding it from them, but they never asked. Plus, I'd dated a girl when they knew me in high school which helped me blend in. As for Ted I was pretty sure he was straight, but in hindsight I guess I just assumed so because his family was religious and he didn't set off my gaydar.
As wintertime got closer, we started to make hot chocolate on free weeknights. Ted didn't watch TV, but I convinced him to join on my daily reruns of Parks and Recreation (feel free to roast me in the comments). He had a couch in his room and an enormous fuzzy blanket that we'd get under since our landlord couldn't be bothered to fix the heating, and so our house never got above around 55F/12C. Dear Jesus, I cannot tell you how good it felt to be wrapped up on that couch at the end of a chilly day with a hot chocolate, decompressing with some TV. Ted was a great companion, and quickly took a liking to the show.
After just one or two nights of making this a routine, we had transitioned from sitting on opposite ends of the couch to cuddling up right on one another. Soon after he put his arm around my shoulder, saying in a completely matter-of-fact voice "the neck is one of the primary ways you're currently losing body heat." To be fair, it was true, and so I thought nothing of it.
The first blip I ever got on my highly malfunctioning gaydar came a few days later, after a similar hot-cocoa plus blanket plus TV night. That day we were in my room to not bother another roommate, Nick, with the TV noise while he was finishing a virtual take home exam (aka measuring how many answers he can Google before he gets flagged by Proctorio). I didn't have a couch, so Ted and I were sitting on my bed and watching from across the room. I noticed his eyes getting heavy, but instead of moving fifteen feet to his room after the episode ended, he asked if he could just sleep in my room since he was "too tired to get up."
