To Save Our Families, Let's 'Marry' (BoyxBoy)

Chapter 39

Joshua stopped at the door only a few down from where their families were gathered, stabilising his balance on one foot so he could open the door. Before he had the chance, however, Henry leaned over him, turning the handle and pushing the door open. Joshua nodded slightly before limping into the room, arms finally tired of holding himself up. He might have lured Henry in so he could rest before collapsing, but Joshua did recognise he was on the verge of doing so himself. The man made a mental note to work on his upper body strength once he got the chance to.

Without a word, he went straight to his bed and fell sat down, discarding of the crutched and taking his shoes off so he could elevate his ankle. As he did so, he watched Henry out of the corner of his eye. The blond man had finally ceased his crying, now acting as if he had never been in the first place. He closed the door behind him and looked around the room, eyes going from the shelf of certificates and trophies to the floor to ceiling window before finally settling on the wall covered in bookshelves. It seemed the latter interested him the most.

Taking his eyes off the other man, wondering why he was suddenly pretending to be fine, Joshua focused on rebinding the bandage on his ankle. It did not need a cast but when the family doctor came to check on it, he was told to keep it compressed since he was not taking it as easy as he should.

It wasn't the sheer number of books that had attracted Henry towards the bookshelf, in fact nothing in particular had. It was just that, out of everything in Joshua's room, this looked like it would distract him the most.

Just as Marcus had thought, Henry recognised that normally now would be when he planned to meet or video call someone and unload his feelings to sort through it. That someone normally being Caleb, who was obviously no longer a choice. In fact, just the thought of him made Henry's heart ache.

Personally, he did think his way of sorting through his own feelings was a little childish; normally one would simply digest their emotions, they didn't have to lay everything out to someone else to face it. However, it had never been so much of a problem before, because even if he did not feel like telling any of his other friends, he did always have Caleb there. His friend, ex-friend, could recognise when Henry was ready to talk even before he himself was aware. If Henry didn't initiate it, he would receive prod after prod before he finally did spill.

But that was no longer an option, even though this time Henry was ready to talk at his own accord.

Henry shook his head, looking back at the bookshelf he had been idly moving his eyes across.

The first thing he noticed was a certain collection of books with cringey titles. They looked like novels, but something was bringing his attention to them. To quench his curiosity, he took one off the shelf, almost falling back at the illustrated cover. It was not that the cover was particularly shocking or inappropriate, the reaction was all down to the man's recent trauma.

On the cover there were too men in an embrace, and after reading the summary, it became clear what he had come across: a gay romance novel.

It slowly registered he had found it in Joshua's room, and from the looks of it, there were not a small number of them. In fact, now that he looked closer, there were a few long serials on the shelves. The entire thing seemed surreal, it did not seem like the kind of thing that the ever stoic and perfect Joshua Lore would read, or even associate with. But it was a fact that the book was the said man's.

"I didn't think you would be one to read boy's love."

Joshua winced at the teasing tone. Truthfully, he had forgotten about how vast his reading material stretched. It was a little embarrassing that Henry had found out. However, he did not want to give into the tease and decided to fight back by not showing even a drop of shame on his usually thin face.