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Kyle wasn’t nervous- he wasn’t. His palms were sweaty because it was hot out, he surreptitiously wiped his hands on his jeans. His breathing was totally normal. He was cool and collected, he’d fought some truly terrifying things without breaking a sweat, a blind date wasn’t going to break his calm demeanor.
For some reason he’d let his ex-girlfriend set him up, he’d only been complaining about being single a little bit. But Donna wouldn’t take no for an answer so here he was waiting at the door to an escape room for his mysterious date. He’d tried to look the guy up on social media but he had no internet presence, which was a little suspicious honestly.
All Donna gave him was tall, dark haired and wearing a green shirt. Kyle had only been waiting for three or four minutes when a guy approached the building.
Wow. He was something else. He was a giant, at least six foot two, broad shouldered and extremely fit, biceps straining his olive green shirt. He had dark curls with a white streak in the front, Donna should have mentioned that as a distinguishing feature. But it was his eyes that Kyle really noticed, they were a shade of aqua blue he’d never seen on a human being before, Kyle was absolutely dying to get to his paints and start mixing something up that could capture their light and depths.
Kyle stepped in his path and held out a hand, the man shook it looking bemused.
“James right?” Kyle asked, the man just blinked at him, “I’m Kyle, your blind date.” He clarified, the guy, James, smiled slowly, even his smile was fantastic.
“James, right, call me Jay, please. Sorry I didn’t expect you to be so gorgeous.” He said with a blush. That was smooth.
“You want to get going?” Kyle asked, gesturing to the escape room building. Jay squinted at the sign with a smirk, Kyle wondered why.
“Yeah, let’s go.” Jay said, guiding Kyle into the door with a hand on his lower back.
They paid and got into the room. The first puzzle was simple, figuring out a padlock combination from pictograms, simple counting was all that was needed. Jay let Kyle input the numbers.
The lockbox contained a group of blocks, Jay found a group of slots on a display that the blocks would fit, they just needed the right order. Kyle noticed Jay refrain several times from snatching up the blocks and fixing Kyle’s mistakes. He wondered if Jay had been here before. But either way Kyle appreciated Jay being patient with him.
Jay did discover that their next cipher highlighted different words under black light, which led them to a bookcase and a book cipher. Jay found the right book from the clue pretty easily. Kyle complimented him and he blushed.
“English degree,” he muttered. That’s cool, they both liked art just in different forms, Kyle was sure Jay would provide him with tons of inspiration. Even if they didn’t work romantically he’d found a new muse.
The book led them to a grate in the wall with a message in a bottle just out of reach. Kyle was the one to use one of the little antennas from the nearby radio to knock the bottle close enough to grab.
In the bottle was a riddle:
What has two hands and also a face but no arms or legs?
Jay laughed.
“A clock,” he said with no small amount of disdain, Kyle raised a brow. “Sorry, I’m from Gotham, we have the Riddler, knowing common riddles is kind of necessary.” Oh, that explained it, from Gotham, that was unfortunate.
Jay reached above the door for the wall clock and pulled out a key, which opened the door. Jay held it open for Kyle. He thought they were finished, but it only led to a second room filled with puzzles.
This time Jay took the lead, and they buzzed through in record time, literally, the clerk told them they’d broken a record.
“Well, I’m not ready to break this up yet, you want lunch?” Jay asked and Kyle brightened, he hated thinking Jay might have rushed through the room to get away from him.
“Yeah, that sounds great, where to?” Jay led them to a hole in the wall pizza joint, holding Kyle’s definitely not sweaty hand the whole walk.
“Sorry I kinda rushed through that last part, my dad’s big on family bonding, and escape rooms are a favorite of his, he even makes his own practice puzzles for us to do.” Jay admitted looking sheepish.
“It’s okay, you looked like you fell into the zone there.” Kyle said as they waited for the waitress.
“Yeah,” Jay said, rubbing the back of his neck.
“So what’s good here?” Kyle asked, he was expecting a recommendation but Jay went off on a tangent about New York having the best water for pizza and the restaurant's fire oven, and why he never got to choose his pizza toppings when he went out because he liked to try strange combinations. Jay was apparently very passionate about pizza.
“Let’s do it then, what’s the strangest topping combination on the menu, let’s get weird.” Kyle exclaimed, Jay looked up at him with a beaming smile.
“Really?” He asked.
“What could it hurt?” Kyle asked in return.
They ended up with beetroot, pesto and goat cheese with spicy Italian sausage. The waitress looked like she wanted to tell them no, but just sighed and put in the order.
Their pizza looked like an abomination unto the Lord. But it was surprisingly good. The earthy bitterness of the beet and the buttery tartness of the goat cheese really worked together. The pesto added brightness, they both agreed that the sausage wasn’t really needed, and was the weakest link.
“So Donna didn’t really tell me much about you, what do you do for a living?” Kyle asked, it was a boring topic but the best he could do.
“Freelancer,” Jay said after swallowing a bite of pizza, “I translate text for universities for the most part. I know a bunch of mostly useless languages.” He elucidated.
“That’s impressive though I only know English.” Kyle admitted. He’d tried to learn Spanish on Duolingo but the owl really stressed him out.
“I think I’m up to seven modern languages and five ‘dead’ ones I use when translating.” Jay said, making Kyle’s eyebrows raise.
“Wow, you must be very smart.” Kyle said, impressed. Jay blushed and ducked his head.
“Um, what do you do?” He asked after a minute of silence.
“Freelancer,’ Kyle said, copying Jay’s answer, “I’m an artist though, I’ve done some children’s books, and work for newspapers and stuff like that.”
“That’s cool, you must be very talented, I’d love to see some of your work.” Jay said, looking honestly impressed. And he was implying he’d like to see Kyle again, which was awesome.
“So you’d want to do this again?” Kyle said, gathering his bravery. Jay’s face lit up, before he twisted his lips and furrowed his brow.
“Yes, I’d like to very much, I need to tell you something first though, hopefully you’ll still want to see me.” Jay said, making Kyle nervous, he hoped Jay wasn’t about to tell him he was already in a relationship, or was an international crime lord or something.
“My name is Jason, I’m not your blind date.” Jay said, Kyle just blinked blankly. “You ambushed me and you were so cute, I couldn’t turn you down.” Kyle thought for a minute, it was honestly flattering that Jay- Jason thought he was cute enough to lie. He did wonder if he’d lied about anything else.
“Was that all you’ve lied about?” Kyle asked nervously.
“Yes, I promise, everything else was the truth.” Jason swore, face serious.
“Then I think I can forgive you, gonna have to explain to Donna why I stood her friend up.” Kyle said absentmindedly.
“Take a picture of us and send it to her, it might help explain.” Jason suggested with a laugh. Kyle didn’t think it was a bad idea, he moved over to Jason’s side of the table and smooshed in close while snapping a photo. Jason surprised him by turning his head to kiss Kyle’s cheek. He sent the picture to Donna.
Sorry about James, I kinda found Jason instead.