“What do you think of this one?” Matthew turned his laptop around so the screen faced Damien. A digital listing was loaded on the screen for a four-bedroom, three-bathroom house in a suburb of Aurora approximately twenty minutes from his childhood home. “It’s a good school district and property taxes are reasonable. There’s a park a few blocks away.”
“What’s highway access like?” Damien was curled farther down the bed, partially lying on Matthew’s legs. He massaged belly butter into Matthew’s stretched skin.
“Decent. It’d probably be about a forty-five-minute commute if you factor in traffic.” Matthew turned the laptop back around. “I’m pretty sure it’s close to the train, too, if you don’t feel like driving. Let me look it up.”
“I was thinking more for you than for me. You’ll need to get to school somehow. Can you share the property with me, baby?”
“Yeah, of course.” Matthew sent the link to their shared Dropbox folder. “I really like it.”
“I’m sure I’ll like it, too.” Damien kissed the peak of his stomach, then continued the massage. As he did, Matthew started to harden. Unfazed, Damien took Matthew’s cock into his mouth and sucked while he rubbed in the moisturizing cream.
House hunting suddenly lost its appeal.
Matthew closed the laptop and set it aside. When his hands were free, he held Damien’s head in place and fucked lazily into his mouth.
“Feels good, Daddy,” Matthew breathed. “Feels so good.”
Damien hummed in agreement and continued. He didn’t break for air until after Matthew had shot and he’d swallowed it all down.
“I’ll love anywhere we live as long as we can live there together,” Damien said as he climbed up the bed to lie by Matthew’s side. After a moment’s reflection, he added, “As long as it’s within our price range and preferably not falling down around us.”
Matthew snickered. “There you go stomping on my dreams. Are you saying we can’t live in a soggy cardboard box valued at three million dollars?”
“Tell you what.” Damien pecked him on the lips. “After we get a boring, functional house squared away, we can start looking at three-million-dollar soggy cardboard boxes as vacation homes. It might take me a couple years to get the business up and running to the point where we can afford it, but you’re right—who could turn down an investment like that?”
Feeling more in love than ever, Matthew grinned at him. He was sure he had to look goofy, but he didn’t care. “Not us.”
“Not ever.”
“It’ll pay out in unexpected ways for years to come. We’ll pass it down to our children, who’ll pass it down to theirs. That soggy cardboard box will be our legacy.”
Damien closed his eyes and brushed their lips together, grinning. “Fuck, do I love you.”
“Not half as much as I love you.”
“We’ll have to see about that.” Damien nudged Matthew’s legs open, and they spent the rest of the night locked in the world’s sexiest fight to the death to determine which of them loved the other the most. It ended in a stalemate, but all that meant was that they had an excuse to try to best each other in days to come again, and again, and again.
* * *
One chilly January day, Matthew opened his eyes to discover that the bed was empty and the condo was suspiciously quiet. Perturbed, he groped for his cell phone and checked the time.
It was almost ten in the morning.
Matthew yelped and rolled out of bed, feeling more like a lumpy potato than a man. It wasn’t often that his morning sickness let him get quality sleep, but if he remembered correctly, he’d passed out last night in Damien’s arms at around nine while Damien stroked his belly and listed off reasons why he loved Matthew—one for every lit window on the buildings across the way.
While Matthew appreciated the sleep, Emily wasn’t old enough to be unsupervised for hours on end. Panicked, he yanked on a pair of pajama pants and rushed for the bedroom door only to come to a stop.
Emily was seated on the pullout bed, Damien behind her. He was in the middle of braiding her hair.
“Daddy!” Emily cried in delight. She beamed at him. “Mimi’s making me pretty!”
“Sure am,” Damien said brightly. He winked at Matthew. “Plus the dishes are done, the sheets and blankets on Emimi’s bed have been changed, and I got her clothes sent off to be washed. You were sleeping so well this morning I thought it’d be a shame to wake you, so I took a break from getting all my tax documents in order and decided that today Emimi and I would go on an adventure.”
“A helpventure,” Emily volunteered.
“Yes,” Damien agreed. “A helpventure. With a bonus trip to Damien’s Back Alley Salon. Girl, don’t hold out on us. Show him what else you got done.”
Emily bashfully held up one of her hands. Her nails were painted in all kinds of different colors—she always struggled to pick just one.
