Chapter 13
TROYE
Work kept Matthew and me apart for the next week, but that was okay.
We texted often, and I sent a million memes as I’d warned him I would.
I was a menace. It couldn’t be helped. Living my life as a chronically online streamer meant that I connected with people in different ways.
And one of my favorite things to do was to collect little things that people might find interesting, or funny, or happy, and I liked to forward them.
I was still figuring out what made Matthew tick, so some of the memes I sent were pretty random, but he responded with the appropriate emojis.
Sometimes he tried to turn the conversation to something more serious, and it wasn’t that I didn’t want to talk about those things—they were important.
They were the basic getting-to-know-you questions.
What’s your family like? What kind of childhood trauma did your parents give you?
Do you have any siblings? Have you ever killed a man? Standard post-first date questions.
Eventually he’d get an answer out of me. I grew up poor, with poor parents who didn’t know what to do with a gay kid. To be fair to them, they didn’t know what to do with me when they thought I was straight either.
We don’t talk much. I told him that. I didn’t tell him why.
The why felt like an open sore, and I hated poking at it.
The pain was still too fresh. Too raw. Someday I’d have to tell him that I had to block my parents and had at one time considered taking out a restraining order, but you can’t get one for people who are harmless but annoying.
Eventually, text messages became phone calls. Matthew started calling me at bedtime. After I tucked myself under the covers, Matthew would call and we’d talk. Hearing his voice and seeing his face was a lot better than texting, but it still wasn’t good enough.
I missed him. I missed the way he looked at me and how I could feel the heat of his gaze whenever he let it linger on me.
I missed the feeling of having his attention, and even that wasn’t the same over the phone.
Without his gentle touches, like him reaching for my hand or my face, without him here to draw me close, I felt adrift.
Settled in for the night, I waited for Matthew to call.
We had a routine now and after I sent a text telling him I was in bed, my phone screen lit up with his name.
I hadn’t changed it to Daddy, yet… but maybe one day.
I hadn’t called him Daddy since our date, but I thought about it all the time.
In my head, he was Daddy. In my head, he was Daddy when I sent him a stupid meme and Daddy when he texted me asking how my day went.
He was Daddy when we talked about the game he was developing, and he was Daddy when he told me goodnight and made me end our call.
My phone screen flashed to life, and I answered the call, eager to see him.
His face lit up when he saw me. Or maybe I imagined it did, but either way it made my insides fuzzy and warm. Something about Matthew’s presence, even on a phone call, made the world go soft around the edges.
Safe. He made me feel safe, and that didn’t make sense to me because I’d never really been unsafe, not in any way that I could recall.
My parents were bad at parenting when I was a kid, and we were poor, but I wasn’t unsafe.
My job wasn’t exactly high risk. But when Matthew was around, it was as if I’d never known what it was like to be protected before.
To be important enough to someone for them to do something as kind as start my car for me so I could stay warm.
“How was your day?” I barely bit back the Daddy that wanted to roll off my tongue. Matthew looked haggard, his eye bags had eye bags, but he still managed to shine when he smiled at me.
“Exhausting.”
He stretched, and I wished I were there to comfort him. I’d never given a massage before, so I’d likely be shit at it, but he made me want to try.
My ache for him had cracked my foundation and now instead of a fracture, it was a gaping canyon.
“I don’t stream tomorrow.” I told him.
“I know.” Matthew smiled at me. “You take Thursdays off because they’re your slowest day for web traffic.”
“I know you work, but… I could come over tonight. If you want. You can say no if you don’t want company. I promise it’s not a big deal. We’re both in bed already.”
“Troye, I’d love for you to come over tonight.”
I was out of bed before he finished his sentence just in case he was going to try and add a but at the end. But there was no but. There was no statement to rip the rug out from under me.
“I’ll text you my address.” Matthew already looked better, lighter somehow.
“I’ll be there as soon as possible.”
“Don’t break any traffic laws. I’d rather have you here and whole five minutes later.”
Yes, Daddy.
“You’re no fun,” I said instead, faking a pout. The truth was that I was a pretty responsible driver. But sometimes I was lucky that I hadn’t been in an accident because I thought I was paying attention, and I really wasn’t. Thank God for horns.
Getting redressed just after I’d gotten undressed annoyed me a little, but I couldn’t very well just jaunt across town in February wearing nothing but my taco cat underwear. Comfortable? Yes. Practical? Not really. Warm enough? Definitely not.
Matthew stayed on the phone with me while I got ready but then insisted that we end the call so I could put all my focus onto driving.
Winter still had yet to make a real appearance.
There was a skiff of snow that had fallen, and it stuck to things, but it hadn’t amounted to much.
The roads were bare again after a quick layer of salt had melted the ice and snow.
Matthew lived in a little house on a quiet street nestled away from the busier city center where I lived.
With a bit more snow, it would’ve looked like a Christmas card.
The houses were all similar in size and build.
An older neighborhood, I guessed that these were the houses of the 1950s.
The post-WWII kind. Small, but functional houses in tidy rows on quiet streets.
Admittedly, Matthew’s house was one of the nicer ones. Some of them needed a little more TLC than others. Worn-out paint, a crooked shutter here and there, cracked walkways, and among them all, his house shone like a jewel. Fresh paint. New windows. A perfectly landscaped front yard.
I pulled into his driveway, and then I was out of my car and at his front door, a backpack hanging from one shoulder, hoping I looked casual enough and not eager like an excited puppy.
The deadbolt snapped open with an audible click that I felt in my chest. And then the doorknob turned, Matthew pulled the door open, and practically yanked me over the threshold.
He pulled me into his house, into his arms, and kissed me as he shoved the door closed behind me.
I wanted him to push me up against it, to lose his mind, his control, and fuck me where I stood.
My backpack slid to the floor with a gentle thud, and I clung to Matthew, kissing him back like we’d been apart years instead of days.
When he pulled away, I was a half-melted puddle of breathless desire. I could have drowned in his eyes, in the deep pools of caramel and honey that looked at me with emotions I couldn’t name and thoughts I couldn’t know.
“I’m glad you’re here.” His admission felt like a gift.
“I’m glad you let me come over.”
“I’ll always let you come over.” Matthew kissed me again, softly on the corner of my mouth this time.
Always was a long time. I wanted to tell him not to make promises he couldn’t keep, that he might think he always wants me around now, but that might change down the road. In a year, or a week, or even tomorrow. The future wasn’t set, and I didn’t want him to promise me things that he shouldn’t.
“Are you going to give me the grand tour now or in the morning?”
“I’ll show you the important bits tonight.” He pointed to the living room. “That’s the living room. There’s a door in the kitchen that goes to the basement and down the hallway are two bedrooms and two bathrooms.”
“I must admit to being very curious about your bedroom.” I laced my hand with Matthew’s.
He picked my backpack up off the floor as I toed out of my shoes, and he led me to his room.
I took note of his house and how homey and lived-in it felt. Coasters were scattered across the coffee table instead of being neatly stacked. A book lay face-down on one of the side tables near a recliner that had a definite ass impression in the cushion.
The bedroom was tidy. Tidier than mine. But the laundry basket was full, and the bedding was rumpled like someone had gotten up out of bed to answer the door.
“Bedroom,” he said, waving his arm through the air like he was presenting a showroom on The Price is Right. “There’s a bathroom through that door. The other door is the closet. Please, don’t pee in my closet.”
I snorted. “Not to worry. I’ve been toilet trained since I was two.
Well, mostly. There was this one house party I was at, and all the bathrooms were being used by people in various stages of alcohol-induced stomach upset.
It was colder than fuck outside, and I was convinced that if I peed outside my dick would freeze off.
So I did what any logical person would do.
” Heat crawled up my face. “I peed in the sink. But I promise that was a one-off and your sink’s plumbing is safe. ”
A smile crept across Matthew’s face, and he shook his head gently before drawing me close to him, reeling me in with gentle tugs until I was right in front of him.
He grabbed the hem of my shirt, and my arms raised automatically so he could take it off me like we’d done it a thousand times before, though I was sure this was the first.
But maybe we’d met in another life before this one, and maybe our souls knew each other even if our brains and bodies had just met.
Or maybe I was just really fucking into him and was romanticizing every little thing he did—the way his hands hovered at my waist, and how he looked at me, the question in his eyes before it came out of his mouth.
“Can I?” he asked.
I nodded and Matthew pushed my pants past my hips. They slid down my legs and pooled at my feet, and Matthew looked back up at me.
“Taco cat spelled backwards is taco cat,” I said, then I gave him a little shimmy, showing off my shiny taco cat underwear.
When I realized how un-sexy that probably looked, my toes curled in the plush carpet, and I fought hard to not wrap my arms around myself.
But I didn’t have to fight for long because Matthew was suddenly there, winding his arms around me, pulling me against him.
He smiled, pressed against my lips, and he kissed me like his mouth belonged on mine.
And I started to think that maybe it did.