Chapter 7 #2
“Then I felt so drawn to you after a while. I couldn’t stop thinking about you.
How much you cowered, how unsure of yourself you were.
It all started making sense once I learned more about you.
About the foster homes. About everything you’ve been through.
Every time I learned something new I felt what I'd felt at the wedding—bigger this time, and clearer—this pull of I want to put him in something that fits.
At some point in the last few months it stopped being something I was capable of ignoring. "
I reach across the table. Take his hand.
His pulse is racing under my fingers.
"I want to make your life easy, Max. That's what this is. The suit you're wearing tonight—I had it made. The rest of it I've been doing where you wouldn't notice. I don’t want you to want for anything. Tonight I'm doing it where you can see. I'd rather you see."
"...Atlas."
"It makes me happy, sweetheart. Providing for you.
Knowing what your life was and getting to make the rest of it soft.
I didn't know that about myself before I knew you.
I'm going to give you everything you wouldn't have let yourself want a year ago, like you said.
I'm going to do it for the rest of my life.
I've been waiting to get you alone and tell you so. "
He's silent. His thumb moves once across my knuckles.
"...that's a lot to receive."
"I know."
"I don't know what to do with it." He bites his lower lip and my cock stirs in my pants.
"You don't have to do anything with it. You just have to let me."
He swallows.
"...let you."
"Yes."
He looks down at our hands. Looks up at me. His eyes are slightly wet at the corners.
"Okay."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
He takes a sip of wine. His eyes move slow around the room with the careful attention he gives to things he's going to write down later. The candles. The molding. The single rose in the cut-glass vase Henrik put there because I told him it was a romantic occasion.
"Read the menu, sweetheart."
He reads the menu the way he reads everything—finger moving down the list, pausing on three things, weighing them against each other.
Old Max would've ordered the cheapest entree and lied that he wasn't hungry.
Tonight he orders the duck.
Henrik writes it down, glances at me to confirm my order and the wine pairing, then disappears.
Max waits until the door shuts behind him.
"I've never had duck."
"...no?"
"No." He takes a sip of wine. "I've never had this wine either.
I've never been in a restaurant where the menu didn't have prices.
I've never sat down at a table where I knew, going in, I wasn't going to be the one paying for it.
" He looks at me. "I'm thirty seconds from making this list go on for a while. Stop me when it gets sad."
"Don't stop."
He laughs.
"Keep going. I want to know."
He looks down at his glass and turns it once on the tablecloth.
"I've never owned a piece of furniture. I had a bed in three different houses growing up and not one of them was mine until Margot.
I've never had a passport. I've never been on an airplane.
I've never had a haircut from a place that asks how I want it cut—there was a barber on the corner who did the same thing to everyone for fourteen dollars.
" A small embarrassed laugh. "I've never been on a date. "
"Never?"
"Never."
"Define date."
He thinks about it.
"I went to a movie with someone when I was in tenth grade. I think she liked me. I was so worried about her noticing I wasn't really watching the movie that I sat through the whole thing convinced she could hear me breathing. I don't think it counts."
"It doesn't."
"...okay."
"What else?"
He looks up at me through his lashes.
"You really want to know?"
"Sweetheart. I'm asking."
He takes a breath.
"...I didn't know I liked men until I was nineteen."
He says it quiet, like he's never said it out loud before.
"Nineteen."
"I think I knew before then. I just—I couldn't afford to know.
There was no version of my life where it was useful information.
Nobody was going to come find me about it.
Nobody was going to ask. So I folded it up.
Then I got to college and I was sitting in a dining hall and a guy two tables over laughed and I couldn't eat for an hour, and I thought, oh. "
I sit very still. "And then?"
"Then nothing. I was working and going to school.
I didn't know how to be near anybody. I'd never let anybody close enough to find out.
" He takes another sip of wine. "I think that's why the bond—when it started, with you guys—I didn't fight it the way I think I would have if I'd had any practice fighting that kind of thing.
I didn't have any practice at all. I didn't have anybody to compare you to. "
I take a sip of my wine. If he was closer, I would cup his cheek. Caress his neck.
Fuck, I just want to touch him when he talks.
"God, I’ve never admitted any of this before." His eyes are bright in the candlelight. "It’s nice that you keep asking. It feels like somebody finally cares."
I reach across the table.
He puts his hand back in mine without looking down.
I am in so much trouble with him.
I've known I was in trouble for months. But sitting at this table, holding the hand of a man who has just told me he didn't fight the bond because he'd never had practice fighting anything close to it, the trouble clarifies itself into something I can hold in one hand.
I'm going to spend the rest of my life giving him things he hasn't had.
Good.
I can’t fucking wait.
The duck arrives. Henrik pours us each a second glass of wine without being asked, leaves the bottle, and disappears.
Max picks up his fork. Cuts a small piece. Puts it in his mouth.
He stops chewing.
He sets the fork down quietly, closes his eyes for one beat, and when he opens them he looks at me like I've personally arranged for the duck to be what it is.
"...okay. I get it."
"Mm?"
"Why people make such a big deal about places like this. I always thought everyone was being dramatic."
"They're not being dramatic."
"No. I see that." A small private smile at his plate. "Christ, Atlas. This is really good."
He picks the fork back up and eats slow and quiet, cutting the pieces small.
He gets through his second glass of wine before the plate is clear, and somewhere into the third he starts talking.
About a class he's taking this fall. A professor he liked from last year.
A novel he wants me to read. Plans he hasn't said out loud before—wanting to see the ocean from the other coast, wanting to learn to drive a stick shift, wanting to see a Broadway show, even one of the bad ones, just to say he had.
His hands have started moving when he talks, which they don't do when he's sober.
His face is a little flushed. He's leaning forward over his plate.
"I'm going to take you to all of those."
He blinks.
"Really?"
"Every one. I want a list. Written down."
"You can't just—"
"I can."
"Atlas, I was just talking."
"I was listening."
He looks at me. He takes a long slow sip of wine—third glass—and his eyes don't leave my face.
"...okay. You’re impossible."
I've stopped pretending I'm not watching him.
He notices.
He doesn't blush. He doesn't flinch. He sets the glass down with deliberate slowness, and then his foot—his foot touches the inside of my ankle under the table.
I look at him.
He doesn't look away.
"Sweetheart."
"Mm."
"Is that on purpose?"
"...maybe."
"Are you flirting with me?"
"...is it working?"
Jesus fucking Christ. I set my glass down.
"Look at me."
His eyes come up. They've gone dark. "Yes, sir." He says it like he knows exactly what he’s doing. And it’s fucking working.
The room temperature drops six degrees.
"Order the dessert, Max."
"Yes, sir."
"Eat it slow."
"Yes, sir."
"And keep your foot exactly where it is."
He does.
He orders the tiramisu without looking at the prices, and that's when my chest really swells. I watch him eat it, wanting to taste the flavors off his lips, his tongue.
I could eat him up.
There's no one in this room. Henrik won't return until I ring the bell at the sideboard now that dessert has been served.
I let myself watch him longer, openly, his eyes fluttering shut at the second and third bite, his tongue catching a smear of cream from the corner of his mouth, the soft hum he makes that he isn't even aware he's making.
I'm hard against the inside of my thigh. So fucking hard I think I’m lightheaded.
I haven't been hard at a dinner table since I was a teenager. I'm currently hard at a dinner table while my stepbrother eats tiramisu, and the thought that should mortify me does not.
I want him.
I want him under me. I want him out of this suit and into my hotel room within the hour, and I want him to know exactly what he's done to me to get there.
He opens his eyes.
He catches me looking.
He puts the spoon down, dabs his mouth with the corner of the cloth napkin, and leans his elbows on the table.
"Atlas?"
"Hm."
He clears his throat, his eyes lowering. "You're hiding something."
I feel his concern and hurt through the bond and the moment shifts. I’m sitting up taller, unable to parse out what he means.
But I take a slow sip of wine and pretend to keep my cool.
"What gives you that impression?"
"Richard mentioned that you'd be traveling for some long project and I haven't known what to do with that piece of information for over a week.
So I've been waiting for you to bring it up.
You haven't. Tonight you took me to a restaurant I'm going to think about for the rest of my life and you bought me a suit and you've been looking at me across the table like—"
He stops.
"Like what?"
"Like you’re saying goodbye or something." His brows knit.
I set the glass down.