Queer Experiences and Stories: The drawer
Elias was looking for the Thai menu.
Not just any Thai menu. The good Thai menu. The one that delivered beyond the postcode boundary without charging what Elias considered an insulting amount for two portions of pad see ew. The one with the handwritten note beside the telephone number that said good curry, avoid the prawns in Julian’s sloping, increasingly dramatic handwriting.
He found it in the third drawer down.
He also found seventeen other menus.
Some were folded into squares. Some had curled corners. One had been used as a coaster and had acquired a pale brown ring that looked, in Elias’s opinion, like evidence from a very small and disappointing crime scene.
Then he found the menu from a restaurant that had closed two years ago.
“Oh,” Elias said.
From the kitchen, Julian called, “That’s never a good oh.”
“It could be an excellent oh.”
“It isn’t.”
Elias pulled the menu free. The restaurant had been called Luigi’s Corner, though there had never been a visible corner. It had occupied a narrow shop beside a dry cleaner and had apparently specialised in pizza, garlic bread, and a level of confidence about its tiramisu that no one had been able to justify.
Julian appeared in the doorway.
He saw the menu.
The whole flat seemed to pause around him.
Even Maurice the plant stopped leaning dramatically towards the window and held himself upright for nearly three seconds, which Elias had previously believed impossible.
“Put that back,” Julian said.
Elias looked at him. “You know this is not how drawers work.”
“Put it back exactly as it was.”
“Ah.”
There it was. The important word.
Not put it back. Not please don’t throw it away. Exactly as it was.
That was how Julian had spoken about the middle shelf. About the coffee tins. About the left side of the sofa, which apparently had “a particular light” after four in the afternoon, despite the fact that the particular light was usually caused by a bus passing outside.
It was also how he had reacted when Elias rearranged the bookshelves.
Not angrily, exactly. Julian rarely did anything exactly. He had gone quiet, then reorganised three sections while claiming he was only “checking something”.
Elias held up the menu.
“Is this the sacred artefact?”
Julian’s mouth tightened. “It’s a takeaway menu.”
“So is the Thai one.”
“The Thai one is current.”
“This one has a telephone number beginning with 01.”
“Lots of things begin with 01.”
“Not restaurants that still exist.”
Julian took one step into the kitchen. The creaky floorboard complained beneath his foot.
It was the same floorboard that complained whenever either of them approached a difficult conversation. Elias had begun to suspect it was less a structural feature and more a committed participant.
MM romance unexpected places — What the menu was really saying
The trouble with living together was that objects developed biographies.
The ugly duck mug had started as a joke from a charity shop and had become Julian’s preferred vessel for woodland-finish coffee. The sock supporting the shelf had begun as a temporary solution and had now achieved the status of load-bearing architecture. Maurice’s dramatic lean had been caused by a missed watering and was now treated as a personality trait.
The takeaway menus were worse.
They had dates, nights, people, versions of Julian.
Elias knew that because Julian kept them all in the same drawer but never looked through them. He preserved the past with the intensity of someone pretending not to notice it.
“You’ve kept every menu,” Elias said.
“No.”
Elias lifted another. “This one is from a place that became a vape shop.”
“I liked their noodles.”
“This is a pizza menu.”
“I liked their pizza.”
“You don’t even eat olives.”
“I liked removing the olives.”
“That’s not liking pizza. That’s negotiating with it.”
Julian reached for the old menu. Elias didn’t give it to him.
The menu was tucked behind the others, its paper softened with age. A small grease mark had darkened one corner. It was not the kind of thing anyone would keep by accident. Not unless they were keeping everything by accident, which was Julian’s preferred method of emotional organisation.
“What happened that night?” Elias asked.
“Nothing.”
“Julian.”
“Nothing I need to discuss over takeaway.”
“We haven’t ordered takeaway.”
“Then we should discuss it before we order takeaway.”
Elias gave him a flat look. “You’re trying to use hunger as a delaying tactic.”
“I’m trying to use hunger as a reasonable human concern.”
“You had woodland coffee at half five.”
“That was coffee.”
“That was a drink with the finish of a forest floor.”
Julian looked away.
There it was again. The quiet.
For emotionally invested MM readers, this was the bit where everyone could see the locked door before the character admitted there was a room behind it. In a character-driven queer fiction story, the argument was rarely about the object on the table. It was about what the object had been made to carry.
Elias knew that.
He still hated it.
Gay love story emotional journey — The fear of being temporary
“Is it from him?” Elias asked.
Julian frowned. “Who?”
“The person.”
“There are several people.”
“That is not reassuring.”
Julian sat down on the left side of the sofa. He did this when he was frightened of an answer. The left side was where he went to become immovable.
Elias remained standing.
“Your dead friend?” he asked carefully. “Or someone you dated?”
Julian’s face changed.
It wasn’t dramatic. Julian didn’t do dramatic faces unless Maurice fell over. But something in him folded inward.
“The menu is from Theo’s birthday,” he said.
Elias lowered it.
“The year before he died,” Julian continued. “We went to Luigi’s because it was the only place open after ten. Theo hated it. He said the pizza tasted like someone had described Italy to a microwave.”
“That sounds like him.”
“You never met him.”
“I’ve heard enough stories to know he had opinions.”
Julian’s mouth twitched, but the smile didn’t stay.
Elias glanced at the menu. “So you kept it because of Theo.”
“No.”
The answer came too quickly.
“Then because of what?”
Julian rubbed his thumb over the edge of the paper. “Because of who I was.”
Elias said nothing.
“I kept it because I was still the kind of person who thought people left because they were busy,” Julian said. “Or tired. Or moving away. I thought if someone disappeared, I had probably misunderstood the entire relationship.”
His voice had gone quiet, but not evasive. This was different. This was Julian taking something out of hiding and setting it between them.
“I thought I was easy to leave,” he said.
Elias sat beside him, though not on the left side. He left the official territory intact.
Julian looked at the menu. “That night, Theo told me I was allowed to want things. He said I kept acting grateful whenever anyone stayed, as if they were doing charity work.”
“That sounds like a very rude birthday speech.”
“He was very committed to honesty.”
“And the pizza?”
“Terrible.”
“Good. I’m glad the evening wasn’t perfect.”
Julian looked at him.
Elias shrugged. “Perfect memories are suspicious. They make everyone else feel like they’ve arrived late.”
The words sat between them.
Then Elias said, “I’ve been throwing things away because I’m afraid there’s no room for me.”
Julian’s expression shifted.
“I know this flat was yours first,” Elias continued. “I know the mug, the shelves, the menus, the sock, the woodland coffee, and Maurice’s ongoing medical emergency all existed before I did. But sometimes I feel like I’m the newest thing in a flat that’s already full.”
Julian looked down at his hands.
“I don’t want to be another thing you keep until you find somewhere better to put it,” Elias said.
“That’s not what you are.”
“I know you’re going to say that.”
“Because it’s true.”
“People say true things all the time. It doesn’t make them easier to believe.”
Julian nodded. “No. It doesn’t.”
Emotional MM romance literary — Holding on without hiding
For a moment, the only sound was Maurice’s leaves brushing against the window.
Then the plant leaned again.
“Dramatic,” Elias said.
“Supportive,” Julian said.
“Botanically unstable.”
“Emotionally perceptive.”
Elias laughed despite himself.
Julian kept hold of the menu. “I don’t want the past gone.”
“I’m not asking you to erase it.”
“You were going to throw out the old dry-cleaner menu.”
“It was from a restaurant called The Seafood Palace that sold jacket potatoes.”
“It may have had sentimental value.”
“Julian, you hated that place.”
“I may have had complicated sentimental value.”
Elias looked at him. “You can keep memories. You just can’t make me live in a museum.”
Julian considered this.
“What if the drawer is allowed to hold the past,” he said, “as long as it isn’t a hiding place?”
“That sounds almost healthy.”
“Don’t make it weird.”
“You’ve kept a menu from a closed pizza restaurant for two years. We crossed weird ages ago.”
Julian smiled properly this time.
Together, they spread the menus across the kitchen table. The pile was less impressive once it had been removed from the drawer. Several were duplicates. One was from a restaurant neither of them remembered visiting. Another had the old address of their flat printed on it, which made Elias feel unexpectedly tender.
They chose one.
Not the Thai menu. That one was still needed.
Not the menu from the restaurant that had closed. Julian admitted he no longer remembered the food.
They kept Luigi’s.
Julian folded it once and placed it in the drawer at the front.
On purpose.
The rest went into recycling, except for the current Thai menu, which Elias put on the fridge with a magnet shaped like a lemon.
“Now,” Elias said, “we order from the new place.”
Julian picked up his phone. “The new Thai place?”
“The new Thai place.”
“Do you trust it?”
“No. But I’m willing to build a future.”
“That seems a lot of pressure to put on pad see ew.”
“Then it should have thought about that before entering our home.”
Julian moved closer. His shoulder pressed against Elias’s.
The flat was still full. The bookshelf was still arranged according to Julian’s strange private logic. The left side of the sofa remained reserved for reasons no one could explain. Maurice was leaning like a man who had just received devastating news. The shelf was still supported by a sock.
Nothing had been solved completely.
That was the point.
A gay love story’s emotional journey did not always end with a grand declaration or a dramatic departure. Sometimes it ended with two men deciding which paper to keep, ordering dinner from somewhere neither of them had tried, and making a rule they could both live with.
The past could stay.
It just had to stop pretending it was the only thing in the room.
Read with Pride — Stories that stay with you
For readers who love LGBTQ+ ebooks, gay novels, queer fiction, MM romance books, and emotionally rich gay love stories, this series is about the small domestic moments where love becomes visible.
Discover more heartfelt gay fiction and emotional MM books from Dick Ferguson through Read with Pride.
Three possible next instalments — Where Elias and Julian go from here
-
Queer Experiences and Stories: The Cat-Naming Walk to the Corner Shop
Elias and Julian attempt to name a stray cat and discover that agreeing on a name is harder than discussing their entire emotional history. -
Queer Experiences and Stories: The Creaky Floorboard Finally Gives Way
A minor household repair becomes a major test of trust when Julian insists he can fix it and Elias finds the sock was doing more work than either of them realised. -
Queer Experiences and Stories: The Sunday Elias Meets Julian’s Friends
Elias finally hears the full story of Theo from the people who knew him best, and learns that Julian has left out several important, hilarious, and deeply inconvenient details.
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