710+ Gay Short Stories to read

Submitted by writers on Reedsy Prompts to our weekly writing contest. From cozy romances to coming-out stories and more, love wins in our collection of gay short stories.

🏆 Winning stories

“The World’s on Fire ” by Dena Linn

🏆 Winner of Contest #249

Trigger: Cancer My head rocks back, long hair sticks to sweaty shoulders and my tank barely holds my jiggling A-cups as I pound it out, dancing. I’m that “Girl on Fire,” a single mom gyrating to Ms. Keys. Flinging out one arm, hips swing and dip, fingers snap, eyes close, and my rock and roll fantasy, straight from a music video: my apartment’s clutter, with the snap of my fingers, flies to order. I burn, more than a flickering flame, heart thumps, shoulders shimmy, sweat drips into my pierced belly button. The fuchsia, sun-yellow and ...

76 likes 60 comments 60

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“Frozen Lemonade” by Jennifer Fremon

🏆 Winner of Contest #236

Trigger warning: Contains underage sexual content, mentions of assaultYou know the movie Dirty Dancing? The one where Baby goes off to that fancy resort with her parents for the summer, and in the beginning she is a good, sweet girl who loves her daddy, and then by the end she is still a good sweet girl who loves her daddy but now she is kinda sexy too and can dance like a pro and is totally in love with that beautiful dance teacher. Why doesn’t anyone talk about how that teacher is clearly much, much older than Baby, and despite Patrick Swa...

146 likes 89 comments 89

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“The Traveler Wife” by Yves. ♙

🏆 Winner of Contest #45

I miss her; I imagine she misses me worse. It’ll be years until I hear back, and years until she hears me, and I’ll be listening to a recording already years old and the real her will be on Earth alone. I keep myself sane with math; I send her how long she’ll have to wait with each message. You’ll hear from me again in six years. I love her. When I left we were both twenty-six. It was insane; a lottery win. To a distant moon. She never understood any of it, no matter how many times I showed her charts or graphs or playful drawings of where...

182 likes 71 comments 71

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⭐️ Recommended stories

“All I Want For Christmas” by Elisa Skoett

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #229

It was a long way to Ezra’s parents’ vacation home. The road was narrow and winding, the switchbacks crawling up the snow-laden mountains. Darkness seeped over the horizon and the shadows of trees stretched and receded as the car’s headlights cut through the inky blackness. The falling snow was reflected in the sickly yellow beams, the tunnel of white reminding Ezra of the opening of a Star Wars movie.  All I Want For Christmas Is You was playing and Ezra sang along, his voice high and off-key. He put his feet on the dash despite the n...

42 likes 25 comments 25

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“Graduation, Dreams, and Ospreys” by Lee Disco

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #201

TW: LanguageThe living room smells of smoke, cloying ash lodging into my sinuses. The misty heat from outside wafts down the chimney and creates a palpable shift in the temperature around the fireplace—I sit in front of it and press my hands against the wooden floors, noting how the humidity seems to make them dip under my fingertips, makes them soft and waxy.The heat eases the shiver under my skin, cold from the drenched suit, the source of the dripping that rings into the quiet, empty home. I tap a pattern out on the floor, but with my wan...

22 likes 10 comments 10

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“Parallel” by Mihnea Balan

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #196

Horace wakes up at 6:30 AM. He gazes toward his wife but she’s brazenly curled up in a ball with her back toward him. After sighing his morning sigh, Horace gets up and walks to his study. He glances at his bonsai tree. It’s obsessively trimmed. He then sets Newton’s cradle in motion and begins his ritual of looking into the brown eyes reflecting back at him from the mirror, putting on his suit, and rehearsing the meeting’s talking points. Newton’s restless balls set the rhythm. As he’s mentally orating, Horace fixates on certain words in hi...

25 likes 9 comments 9

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✍️ All stories

“The Name He Left Behind” by Rohit Tiwari

Submitted to Contest #278

The room was quiet, except for the faint beeping of the heart monitor, he gripped my hand with more strength than I expected, it was almost time, I could feel his soul slipping away, breaths slow & shallow, eyes wide open, staring into some distant oblivion, I didn't know what to do. Numbness wrapped around me like a heavy blanket. I look at him, he's so beautiful, chemo brushed the strands of his yesterday, but still, he's so beautiful. Then he began to mumble, words I couldn't make out. Maybe when a soul is departing, it clings to one ...

2 likes 0 comments 0

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“On Reflection” by Pietro Marino

Submitted to Contest #278

           Probably I shouldn’t have opened the email. But I did, and couldn’t stop reading and rereading it, to the point that I can recite some of it verbatim.   I shouldn’t have taken your breaking up with me the way I did.           Now, you have to admit that it was a combustible load you dropped on me, saying you didn’t like the person I became when I was around my friends—the sarcasm, the bitchy queenery—and the...

6 likes 0 comments 0

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“Apologies Seem to Come and Go. ” by Joseph Lucero

Submitted to Contest #278

Many years in the future. I'm no longer the twenty-three-year-old kid that I was when there was no need for letters because we would talk in person face-to-face. I would look deep into your brown-green eyes, and I would be lost. Now, as I sit at my small kitchen table and I'm looking at the letter you sent me. You began it just like how I thought you would start a letter. You start it the same way you would begin small talk. As I look at it now, I can't help but feel sad, and angry. What was the need for this letter I'm looking at? Knowing y...

8 likes 0 comments 0

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“No love for a wicked soul” by Moa Holmertz

Submitted to Contest #277

Warning: Mentions of sexual violence, bullying and suicide. Humans are the most wicked beings on planet Earth. I know, unbelievable observation. Totally unique worldview. The thing everyone says once in a while in their most cynical moments. However, most base this on news from warzones, endless studies of climate change or documentaries of serial killers. They never base this on the constant evil within us, that makes us into an animal among the rest of God's creation. Am I evil? Probably. I have done some shit. When I was young it was inn...

6 likes 0 comments 0

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“Potter Street” by Story Time

Submitted to Contest #277

He can go out when the kids are asleep. They’re still young enough to be put to bed before ten. That’ll change in a few years, and then he doesn’t know what he’ll do. He loves his kids, but he thinks about what having kids meant a hundred years ago. When there were nannies and people went on honeymoons for months on end, like in The Sound of Music. He thinks about boarding school and wonders to himself if he has the guts to send his kids to one. Not because he’d miss them, although he might, but because of the judgment he’d face from everyon...

11 likes 7 comments 7

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“I Know” by Zacharias Boer

Submitted to Contest #276

“Will you go on a date with me, Zach?” That’s what he asked me. Outside, on the lunch hour at a robotics competition sometime in October. We two sat on a concrete quarter-wall in the high school courtyard, each in our team shirts. It was chilly outside that day so I knew my face was flushed, incriminating me. I forget the context in which he asked me that. It was meant as a joke, a witty response to some dry comment I’d made about girlfriends or boyfriends or sex or something. The point is that he asked me, and I had already convin...

5 likes 2 comments 2

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“They Always Turn Up Late” by Jace Keeler

Submitted to Contest #275

Trigger Warning:This story contains themes of family conflict and betrayal, death and grief, substance use, psychological manipulation, mature language, and brief violence. “Today, we say goodbye. We say goodbye to a friend, to a mentor, to a colleague, and to a father. We say goodbye to Jim Mercer.”Jack gave a deep sigh. “A father,” he muttered, the words tasting bitter. He slouched back on the torturously uncomfortable bench, crammed between people he didn’t recognize, their shoulders pressing awkwardly against his. Around him, mourners da...

5 likes 6 comments 6

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“Today I Fed a Fish” by Story Time

Submitted to Contest #276

I was never known for having luck with fish. When I was a child, my mother dutifully bought me a goldfish in a perfect glass bowl. This was the ideal goldfish. I don’t remember what I named her, but I remember that she looked just like Cleo from Pinocchio and I pledged to find a way to take her on adventures with me. Unfortunately, we never got that far, because my favorite thing to do with Cleo was feed her.  I was--and still am--very fond of snacks, and it seemed only fair that the fish should eat every time I ate. Soon, she was takin...

32 likes 27 comments 27

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“Lost and Found #reedsyencounter” by Jason Mcconahey

Submitted to Contest #276

Life in the closet was never easy, I hid myself from the world and I hated myself because of what, who I was. The world seemed so scary, so scary in fact that I’ve never told anyone about who I really was. Growing up in a strict Christian household didn’t help much either. The church told me God thought people like me were an abomination, something that was against nature. I was unnatural, something that was undeserving of Gods love. Hearing these things all my life I pushed parts of me down, so far down into my subconscious that I w...

11 likes 3 comments 3

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“Ghosted” by Mae Hudson

Submitted to Contest #275

CELESTE Celeste Baker had seen many horror movies, and a large range of special effects. She knew how to recognise when the producers had used too much fake blood, or when their special effects budget was clearly low. She knew every quote from every 80s slasher film by heart, had seen plenty of Final Girls die gruesomely at the last second - so why did this scare her so much? Staring at the body in front of her, Celeste's hands shook. The man was young-ish, maybe late-thirties, with dirty blond hair and a trickle of blood down his temple. Hi...

7 likes 0 comments 0

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“The Next Realm” by Priyanjali Bhattacharyya

Submitted to Contest #275

So many of us have lived a life, unafraid of each other, surrounded by loved ones who would pick each of our complaints and not rest till they have been resolved. So many of us were given, or in fact, handed out pleasures in this life that our ancestors worked so hard to get to begin with. I say this because I want to impress upon the fact that some of us – boy, we were born lucky. My grandma would get up early in the morning and give the pigeons and the sparrows some uncooked rice grains to eat. Only then would she prepare a meal large enou...

9 likes 2 comments 2

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“Ó Leannáin” by Wolfgang Widrig Wood

Submitted to Contest #274

The moonlight drifted pleasantly through a gap in the autumn clouds. Breathing in, you would taste rain and smell the delight of the refreshed grass and mud. Niamh shivered, not because of the cold, but from the excitement that came from knowing that after tonight she would be an adult. She couldn’t help the foolish smile that spread across her face. Her boots sank softly into the mud till she reached where the road became divided into three parts. It had gotten so deep that no carriages could safely be pulled through. Her skin tingled ...

5 likes 1 comment 1

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“A Seeker of Dreams And His Journey ” by Alex Hawkins

Submitted to Contest #274

“Being a hearing person is what is expected,yet being deaf is what makes me different.” Starting on October 10th, 2024, in my silent world with shadows and my journey.“Being a hearing person is what is expected, yet being deaf is what makes me different. Why? Yes, I am asking you why. It is your world that I am living in. It is all about you and how you hear, period. You know I am right.”I have learned the hard way. I was forced to wear my hearing aids and FM system when I was a young boy. Even, I took speech classes, starting in prescho...

4 likes 0 comments 0

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“Somerville, Massachussets” by Zen Tremaine

Submitted to Contest #273

Age 9, LiamPercy sat on the highest platform of the playground, legs stuck under the railing so they could swing in open air. He hung onto the bars while his eyes followed Liam, who was running in circles around the swing set to annoy Jake.“Stop it, Liam! I’m going to get Mr. Davis!”“He won’t do anything; I’m not even touching you! How about you stop being a baby?”Percy laughed and called out, “Yeah, Jake! You’re a baby!”Liam looked up towards Percy and smiled.“God, leave me alone and go hang out with your boyfriend or whatever!” Jake whined...

10 likes 0 comments 0

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“ Beneath the Spanish Sun ” by Will Bashor

Submitted to Contest #273

The plane’s engines hummed as Logan gazed out the window, watching the rolling waves of the ocean beneath him as the sun set. He’d never been to Europe before, never even thought of Spain until he met Guy. Even in the confined space of the airplane, Logan could already imagine the golden rays of June and the smell of suntan lotion as he lay on the beach. His heart fluttered with a mix of anticipation and anxiety. It could be the adventure of his life. Guy. Just the thought of him sent a rush of warmth through Logan. They had met online right...

9 likes 1 comment 1

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