If You Miss It

32. singe

CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

SINGE

—

"So... What do you think?"

A satisfied hum came from Tariq's direction as his eyes wandered around the room, scanning every single corner of the room, before his eyes finally landed on Dmitri.

"I can see your floors," he finally said, the smile that had been dancing on his lips since he came over still not leaving, not even for a second. "Your entire floor."

Dmitri smiled, partially because he was proud of himself, but mostly because Tariq was smiling. Or maybe it was a fifty-fifty, he didn't know.

All he knew was that his room was clean, fully clean, not even a sock out of place.

He had even gone as far as to change his sheets from their usual white to a new set of sheets, a pale blue one that Eden had given him for his birthday the previous year.

Shit. That's coming up. Never mind, I don't want to think about that.

"I know," Dmitri agreed, the pride in his chest for himself, for once, almost making it hurt. "I cleaned the mirror, too!"

Tariq let out a laugh at that as he looked up into the mirror, his eyes finding his face and flitting to Dmitri's for a split moment, before he grinned and said, "Now, all that's left is your cupboard. But honestly, fuck cupboards, you don't have to—"

"I cleaned it!" Dmitri chirped before Tariq could continue, pulling the doors of his wardrobe open and showing him the inside of it, the clean shelves with clothes that he had folded neatly, instead of shoving them away.

He didn't know why he had done it. Cleaned his entire room. Claire had said that he needed to clean his surroundings because 'only when your environment is clean can your mind be clean'. Or so she had said.

Of course, Dmitri had shot back a quick, 'You sound exactly like my mom telling me to get rid of the boys in my environment, because they were making me impure,' because he couldn't do therapy without constantly making jokes about his surprisingly temporarily stable mental health to cope.

"Very sexy of you," Tariq stated. Giving Dmitri another smile, he seemed to be giving him a lot of those lately (not that he was complaining), he sat down on the freshly made bed, pulling his legs up to his chest and saying, "Did you go to church today?"

Typically, Dmitri wouldn't have wanted to talk about church. Because fuck, was it horrible to deal with sometimes. Most of the time.

Today, however, it wasn't entirely horrible.

Mostly because he had switched to a church that was slightly further away, and as much as he missed his previous church, this one was so much more accepting, and he wasn't even out to anyone there.

"Mhm." Taking a seat right next to Tariq, he leaned his back against the wall behind his bed, since he had no fucking headboard. "It was nice. The pastor dude is super cool, he's like— he's not a cool priest, thankfully, those guys are fucking weird. He's just chill. And the choir is cool. Oh, and the church is really fucking pretty. Homophobes just make places less pretty," he rambled on. Am I talking too much?

Tariq smiled, nodding. "Yeah?"

"Yeah," Dmitri echoed. "I accidentally swore in church though. That was fun."

Barking out a laugh, Tariq shook his head, reaching his hand up to push his hair out of his face. "How the fuck did you manage to do that?" he questioned, turning around to face Dmitri.