It was a damp Sunday in Seattle Washington. Big bushy clouds rolled down the Olympic mountains periodically dousing the city with a crisp rain before allowing the sun to provide a brief respite to the urban citizens, who paid little mind to the drizzle. This Sunday was like any Sunday for Johannes, who preferred to run his life on the rigid side of the phrase "rigid flexibility". He was sitting on a bench in the back of a laundromat hunched over his laptop so that his strained eyes could see the brightly colored code against the dark background of his text editor. Of course, no one expected him to work on the weekends, least of all his boss, but he found that even just a few hours of preparatory work put him leagues ahead of his colleagues in the competitive Seattle tech scene.
Johannes looked up from his work to think through a particularly vexing line or two of code that he wanted to simplify. His weary eyes peered out of the glass of the front of the laundromat to find a man and a woman walking in, each holding a bag of laundry. The man adjusted his grip on the laundry bag and opened the door for what appeared to be his girlfriend, allowing her to pause briefly in the doorway to mop a layer of rain from her forehead. Her fingers pushed into her lustrous blonde hair, which she fluffed up, reveling just a little in the feeling of it.
After she walked through the door, the man sauntered through, and pushed the dark, wet locks of hair out of his face. His brown eyes were bright, and an almost imperceptible smile of satisfaction rested at the corners of his mouth. He briefly scanned the room before his eyes caught Johannes' in the back of the room. His eyes lingered until Johannes dropped his gaze hurriedly back to his code. He readjusted his grip on his laundry bag and followed his girlfriend to the washing machine she'd chosen.
Johannes kept his eyes on his computer as he felt his heart flutter a little and heat rise in his cheeks. He wrote a line of code, then deleted it. Wrote it, deleted it again. His fingers worked busily at writing a program that his mind had since abandoned. He shifted uncomfortably on his bench as he worked. He crossed on leg, and rested his computer on it, then switched legs. Finally, he gave up on his code and looked back up. The laundromat was full of people, but Johannes only saw two of them. As he peered sheepishly over his laptop, he watched the couple as they loaded up two washing machines. The woman struggled a little bit, putting her whole body into each of her movements. Over the machines, Johannes could only see her head and shoulders, but the loose blonde strands of her messy bun bobbed and swung with every armful of towels that she threw into the washer. Her boyfriend, by contrast, moved effortlessly. Since he wore a tight tank top, Johannes could see that he was well-toned. As he grabbed armfuls of laundry, the tendons in his shoulders contracted and relaxed again as he tossed them into the washer.
They finished loading their laundry, put their empty bags on top of the washers they had claimed, and floated over to the side of the laundromat to wait. They, unlike Johannes, did not seem to mind being unoccupied and chatted to each other idly as the machine did its work. Now Johannes had an uninterrupted view of the pair. The man put his arm around his girlfriend's shoulder, and she leaned into him. His hand on her far shoulder made just the slightest indentation in her soft flesh. He must have said something funny, because she laughed with a rich alto voice and pushed her hand against his chest. She might as well have been touching a marble statue, because his skin showed no movement at all besides the corners of his mouth, which pulled into a wide smile as he watched her laugh at his joke. He seemed totally absorbed in the sound.
Somewhat indulgently, Johannes imagined what the man must have been feeling in the moment. His girlfriend's skin looked so smooth; he imagined what it must feel like to hold her against him. She was probably warm too, and since she wasn't totally dry from the rain, his hand would probably glide right over her. And her voice! Her laughter sounded more like a song than a sound. He just wanted to close his eyes and listen to her, but to close his eyes would be to miss the view. He imagined what the man must have felt with the deep vibration of her laughter resonating in his stomach the way the body of a guitar also hums the pitch given to it by the strings.
Against his will, he found himself ruminating on the body of that guitar. He had been with a few women before, so he could imagine what the girl felt like, but the man? His shoulders and arms were toned, and his tank top clung to the outline of his strong chest. His midriff was a little wider than Johannes'. What would it feel like to be pressed into the curve of his side the way his girlfriend was?
The couple got up. The woman went to go move their laundry from the washer to the dryer, and the man began to walk towards Johannes. Another moment of eye-contact tied Johannes' stomach in knots and sent him scrambling back to his long-forgotten code. The man sat down on the bench next to Johannes just as Johannes thought of something to hurriedly type. "Hey," he said. Johannes choked out the word "hello" and briefly looked at the man before looking away again. He wrote an unintelligible line of code.
"What are you working on?"
"Oh. It's just a program for work."
"Are you some kind of coder?"
"Sort of. I actually work at an engineering firm, but they need someone who..." Johannes looked the man in the face. He could immediately see that the man had no technical background and would have no clue what he was talking about if he tried to explain, but something about those deep brown eyes made Johannes feel like he absolutely had to fill the silence. "...you know. Well, I guess, someone who codes."
The man's warm smile told Johannes that he had read every thought Johannes had tripped over to construct that sentence. "So, uh, what do you do?" Johannes asked, desperate to get the attention off him.
"Medical equipment," he said. "A buddy and I sell to a lot of the hospitals out in the 'burbs." His speech was slow and relaxed, and he spoke in only a slightly lower register than his girlfriend. He didn't stutter or trip over his words. He and Johannes exchanged pleasantries, but Johannes didn't dare make eye contact with him for more than a millisecond. They both turned to face the rest of the laundromat as a lull formed in the conversation. Johannes considered going back to his code.
"Do you think she would look better brunette?" the man asked suddenly. Johannes started a bit. "Sorry, the blonde lady over there is my girlfriend, Felicity. Her hair is actually naturally dark, but she dyes it. Do you think she would look better brunette?" Johannes watched her as she pushed a cart full of wet clothes over to the dryers. At the roots of her hair, he noticed a dark patch that he hadn't before. His gaze followed the root of her hair down the crown of her head to the messy bun that was barely contained by a hair claw. His eyes traced across her jawline back to her face, over which hung a few blonde strands. He glanced over at the man again to find him watching Johannes expectantly.
"Um. Does she like it better the way that it is? I mean, it looks good like it is now. Uh. What do you think?" The question made him uncomfortable. The man had a playful look in his eye, or was Johannes imagining it?
