A friend of mine gave me the simple prompt "The gay that lives in a fridge, a homoual romance tale", and dared me to write a drabble for it. So, since I can't really write short... I did go what is probably beyond drabble length xD oh well... enjoy! XD (My first attempt at ever writing humor...)

"Slow down!", I called out as my best friend, Anne, sped up in attempt to make me 'eat her dust' as she put it. She knew well that I was far too out of shape to catch up. Don't let that make you jump to the conclusion that I am extremely obese. She's a damn marathon runner, not just a runner but a champion as well. Meanwhile, I'm your average mid-level desk-chained computer nerd. I sit at a desk all day fueled by Mountain Dew (Mountain Dew in no way sponsors or is associated financially with myself, so don't sue them or something! Unless, however, they really want to be. In that case, sue the crap out of them). I weigh probably a decent 170 pounds, or 77 kilograms, something like that, borderline overweight for my height so they say, but not yet overweight. I honestly have no recollection of how she got me to agree to go for a run with her. Although, I strongly suspect hypnosis or dark magic was involved.

Anyways, she of course laughed at me, and I lost her to the wind. I stopped at a fountain in the park, since my lungs were burning for relief. While I had spent ages bent over the child-sized fountain, she had disappeared amongst the expanse acres of forest. "Anne?... ANNE? LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE WHERE ARE YOU???", I called out with fake hysteria in my tone. It was something I often did to embarrass her. I wandered around the park, cutting right through the center of it to see if she had gotten back to where we had started from already. Sure enough, she was there, and like a wild jaguar, she pounced on me. She leaped from a nearby tree like a freaking maniac. Naturally of course, being the man that I am, I screamed like a small Catholic school girl that had come home to find all the crosses turned upside down. I fell and probably broke something, but played it off very smoothly. She laughed more, and I was left wondering why I chose to be friends with her. Again, I suspected magic.

Rather than seeking medical attention, as I should have, I decided to head home. I made the excuse to her that "I have muscle cancer, the bigger my muscles get the worse the cancer gets, and already it's so bad that if I'm any more jacked I'll die", while flexing my nearly non-existent arm muscles. She rolled her eyes, but I got away with it. As a reward for my hard work, 'running' (mostly just walking fast), I treated myself to a few sweets from the bakery around the corner from my apartment building (the main thing that keeps my 'muscle cancer' in check). I do have some self control, so I didn't eat all of the gourmet cupcakes I had purchased (how many I actually ate is between me and fat Jesus... Pardon me. Borderline overweight Jesus...). Like any normal person would do, I put the rest in my fridge. Well, I tried to...

To my utter shock, a contorted man was sleeping in my fridge. My first thought went to Anne. I knew she was definitely crazy, and loved to pull pranks, but a dead body in my fridge??? Pouting like a young child hesitating to blindly put their hand in a bowl of peeled grapes, I poked him. Again, girlish screams erupted from my mouth. He was alive. He was moving. He was .

"WHO ARE YOU? WHAT ARE YOU DOING? DO YOU WANT A CUPCAKE? WHY ARE YOU IN MY FRIDGE? I KINDA NEED THE SPACE. PLEASE EXIT..." I shouted monotonously. He either didn't understand me, or he didn't care. The small man squirmed uncomfortably, frowning as though I was disturbing his rightfully owed rest. "Please... I need my fridge. Come out and uh... I can help you get home. Where do you live? I'll drive you there. I can't afford a new fridge right now, please understand....", I said, hoping somehow I could reason with him. Although, then it suddenly hit me that maybe he was a homeless person that had somehow broken into my apartment. How could someone break into a fourth floor apartment though? I looked around for any clues, and did a quick search of the rest of my apartment to make sure no one else was around. The one window I have is a sliding glass door leading to a balcony. Sometimes squirrels climbs up here, and I would feed them. Perhaps that was how he got in? I never kept the glass door locked. Hell, do they even make locks for those kinds of doors so high up? 

My next question that needed to be answered was, why was he ? I didn't find anything strange lying around the apartment, so he apparently had brought nothing with him. I wondered why if he had already broken into my place anyway and possibly helped himself to my food, why not have taken my clothes? They probably would be baggy on him, but isn't it cold being curled up in the fridge? Also, how did he manage to climb up to my balcony using the lower balconies, if he did, ? Did everyone have their curtains closed? Did not a single person in this city whether in my apartment building or one of the three others nearby not notice a small, , and homeless man climb up to the fourth floor? Did they notice, but decide not to call the police? Maybe they thought it was a stupid college prank. Wait, why didn't I call the police? That probably would've been the most rational thing to do. Yet, when have I ever been the one for rational and practical decisions? (Erm, don't tell my boss that...)

When I returned, he was sleeping again. I poked him again, adamantly protesting his slumber. He whined softly, and I stopped briefly. For a strange, possibly homeless man, he was kinda cute. I poked one of his big, soft, squishy cheeks (the kind on his face, you erts!). He grumbled and fell outward onto me, finally vacating my fridge space. He hung like dead weight on my shoulders with his arms wrapped loosely around my neck. Sleep did seem to be something he greatly needed, or maybe he was just really drunk. I didn't smell any alcohol on him, but who knows. Maybe he was on drugs. Again, I really should have called the police. He could have easily been a murderous escaped asylum patron. However, I suppose I am glad I didn't attempt to get him locked up. Instead, I scooped him up in my arms like a bride being carried to the limousine after the wedding, although it definitely wasn't as glamorous. I laid him down on my bed and tucked him in, rather tightly though. Just in case he did try to kill me, he would have to fight off the blanket burrito first. From years of experience, I know first hand that it takes a full thirty minutes to fight your way out of that er, which gives me ample time to run away or have Anne do a flying ninja kick into their gut. He seemed content eventually with the placement. It didn't take long for him to fall asleep again. Slightly mentally exhausted, I ate another cupcake before putting the rest in the now empty fridge. 

The next day, I awoke disoriented from sleeping on the living room couch. I fell into my usual routine, screaming quiet put-downs at my Keurig for being the most worthless coffee-brewing appliance ever invented after still accepting and lazily sipping the watery fruits of its labor. Next, I searched my fridge for the answers to the questions of the universe, and the universe apparently had answered back with the still intruder from the night previous. Apparently he had awoken in the middle of the night, escaped my trap without my knowledge, and curled up again in my fridge. "Hey... uh... Is this gonna be an everyday thing? As I said before, I need my fridge. I store food in it, hence its sole purpose. You are not food. Therefore, you don't belong in my fridge", I said slowly to him to try and make him see reason. 

The man folded his arms across his chest defiantly with a pout. I picked him up again, and he squirmed in my grasp. Then he bit me, and I dropped him. "YOU BETTER NOT HAVE RABIES OR MAD COW DISEASE", I screamed and then quietly cursed under my breath. Like a moody, rebellious teenager, he got back in the fridge and slammed the door shut.

For the next month, I just let him command my fridge. He didn't seem to have any malicious intentions. There was just something about being in the fridge, and being that he found to be his calling I guess. Without much leftover room in the fridge, I ended up eating a ton ramen noodles. After he had eaten every last thing in that fridge, even the random jar of dijon mustard I had (I don't even like mustard), he began gradually adventuring outside the fridge. Of course, he still slept in it every night, but I got him to come eat with me sometimes at the dining table. I asked him a few questions each time, since I didn't want to pester him into regressing back into never coming out of the fridge. His name was Simon. He didn't have a last name, nor did he tell me where he came from, so there wasn't much I could do to try and find out more about him. Simon shared my love for sweets, and that got him talking a little more when we ate together. He never ate anything hot though, always cold. With much protest, I tried to convince him to at least put on underwear. I bought him plenty of pairs, and he complied reluctantly. He told me he didn't honestly like being all the time, even said it was embarrassing to always be exposed in front of me, which was one of the reasons he had only come out at night in the beginning. Apparently, he couldn't put on any more clothes than that though, despite hating being so exposed in front of me. He didn't say much else, just reinforced that he really couldn't wear anything else, nor could he leave the fridge for long. Again, not wanting to pester him into regression with constant interrogation, I took it slow.

In the months that followed, Winter came. Suddenly, he didn't need the fridge anymore. That frosty morning when I had awoke to find the fridge empty, I had felt a small rock drop in my heart, weighing it down some. I had grown quite fond of Simon. He filled the lonely void in my life, and my fridge. I had something to look forward to now when coming home from a long day of work, learning more about him. It was a mystery that truly had gripped my heart in many ways. I was enthralled by him, enchanted. He was so strange, but that's what pulled me in. Every time I pressed he would let slip small details about himself, and somewhere in my investigation of him, I became infatuated with him. I wasn't obsessed with him, but it did bring me back to when I had those high school crushes on all the straight guys, since there were no other gays at my small town school.

I found Simon eventually, asleep on my couch. He was smiling in his sleep, mumbling soft nothings until I heard him whisper my name. It was kind of sweet, so I let him sleep instead of waking him up for breakfast like I usually did. I draped a blanket over him, which he later kicked off, but it was really the sentiment that counted, right? When I came home from work later that day, to my surprise he was wearing clothes! I thought maybe whatever crazy pills he must have been taking must have finally run out. I followed him out onto the balcony, and I decided to finally pester him with important questions, since he seemed like he had changed a lot recently, so I figured he could handle it.

"Why do you not need the fridge anymore?"

"It's cold enough for me to be free now..."

"Does that mean you'll leave?"

"Do you want me to?..."

I paused for minute, but it felt like a year. Did I still want him to leave? In the past months we had done more than just talk. When I was particularly exhausted from work, Simon would make me sweets, even though he would always get badly burned from the oven. I told him several times that he shouldn't make me anything if he always gets so badly hurt, but he's the most stubborn person I know. When he would get nightmares, he would wake me up in the middle of the night and curl up on my lap, whimpering like a puppy. I would hold him and we'd cuddle until he felt better. I offered to let him sleep in my bed, but he always made it clear that he needed to sleep in the fridge, almost like he'd die if he didn't.

"Do you want me to leave?...", Simon asked again, looking seriously at me. His expression did not show sorrow, nor joy. It was blank, and a little confusing. He seemed like he'd be okay now with leaving if I really wanted him to. After more silence from me, he got up and stood on the balcony railing with remarkable balance.

"No!", I shouted quickly. The fear of losing him had caused my heart to quickly jump into action. I wrapped my arms around his waist and pulled him back towards me, safely away from the railing. He smiled and said nothing as he leaned in and kissed me. Surprised, but not appalled in any way by it, I kissed back.

I put the pieces together without him having to explain much more to me. He could only survive in the cold, and I had read about 'ice bars', where everything was made of ice and kept at below freezing temperatures. I spent a lot of money transforming part of a loft into an 'ice bar' just for him. He was very hesitant when I told him I wanted to take him somewhere, but he trusted me then. He was in such awe that he broke into tears when I told him it was all for him. I had to wear several layers inside the place, but I didn't care. Simon could finally live comfortably, and together we made it work. I had divided the loft into two parts. Half was sealed off to be his frozen wonderland, and the other half was where I could live.

I was frostbitten more times than I could count, and he was certainly burned just as many times as we crossed over onto each other's side, but we both did it for love. Love is just that powerful of a thing. It makes you able to endure anything. Now he no longer lives in my fridge, but lives in my heart.

sidenote: Out of curiosity, I did attempt to fit myself in the fridge. I neglected to account for the fact that I am 5'9 and Simon is 5'4. I got stuck inside for a good two hours before he noticed. Love is such a wonderful thing...

I entered this short story into a contest, so if you like it help me out!!

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