“Oh my god.” Matthew laughed. “So all this time you’ve been hanging out with a bunch of single dads because of a misunderstanding?”
“Yup. By the time I put two and two together, we were all already friends. I couldn’t leave.”
“Then there’s not a Damien Jr. I’ve yet to meet?”
“Nope.” Damien hummed thoughtfully. “Well, there is one, but she hasn’t been born yet.”
“You think it’s a girl?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. But it’s fun to think about.” For a moment, nothing was said. In the silence, Damien imagined what it would be like to have another version of him kicking around.
There’d be trouble, he was sure, and sarcasm. Lots of sarcasm. Potentially too much sarcasm. But somehow all the snark he was in for a few years down the road already seemed worth it.
“I think we should keep the sex of the baby a surprise,” Damien said after a while. “What say you, oh bearer of the fetus?”
“A surprise is fine by me.” Matthew propped his chin on Damien’s chest and studied him thoughtfully. His eyelids drooped from exhaustion. It had been a good twenty minutes since they’d come, but post-orgasmic bliss continued to soften his face. “I have another question, though. This time it’s not related to baby stuff.”
“Shoot.”
“Is your name really Damien Bartholomew Bigg the third?”
“Yes.”
“You’re being serious?”
Damien arched a brow. “Yeah, I am. Do you want to see my passport?”
“No.” Matthew scrunched his lips. “I mean, maybe? Who were the other Damien Bartholomew Biggs? It sounds like they were important.”
“That’s what my dads wanted you to believe.” Damien toyed with Matthew’s hair, sweeping it away from his brow, then combing it back. “My family is… well… you’ll meet them soon. Let’s just say that at the time I was born, the idea was that giving me a powerful name would give me a leg up in life.”
“Did it work?”
Damien swept his arm out, gesturing at the view. “You tell me.”
Silence settled between them. Matthew squirmed and wiggled to get into a comfortable position, eventually ending up on his side with his arm draped over Damien’s chest. Damien closed his eyes and enjoyed his closeness. All it took was a simple touch from Matthew to send goosebumps down his arms, which made snuggling in bed with him total bliss.
“I worked hard all my life,” Damien elaborated. “I got into Columbia by total fluke—to this day I’m convinced it was because they had to fill some poor kid quota to prove to academia they weren’t total white bread snobs. But I digress. I got by on scholarships and the hope that once I was finished with school, I’d hit the ground running in the investment banking industry and be able to pay off my debts. Which, spoiler, totally happened.”
Matthew snorted. He kissed Damien’s chest. “Obviously.”
“But it didn’t happen overnight. I put in the time and sacrificed my social life so I could climb the corporate ladder. I had a string of bad relationships with boys who saw me as an ATM and had my heart broken more than a few times. One of the more unscrupulous boys faked a pregnancy in an attempt to keep me on as his permanent meal ticket. Did you know you can buy positive pregnancy tests online? I sure as shit didn’t. Not until it was almost too late.”
“How did you find out?”
“A lot of small things didn’t add up. After I found out, I had a minor panic attack and started looking into what I’d need to do to take care of him. Some of it I already knew, but some of it I learned for the first time, like how at six weeks you should be able to see the gestational sac via an ultrasound. At twelve weeks, when he wasn’t able to show me pictures, I started to get suspicious and went poking, and not too long after that, his story fell apart.”
Matthew was silent for a while. Damien spent the time they weren’t engaged in conversation lost in memory. The incident had happened almost a decade ago, but it still felt fresh in his mind.
“You don’t think I’m lying, do you?” Matthew asked the question delicately, like he was afraid of the answer. “About the pregnancy, I mean.”
“Of course not.”
“I know we haven’t talked about it too much, but… but if you don’t want it, it’s not too late. We can have it—”
“No.” The word was final. In a rush of sheets, Damien rolled over, pinning Matthew beneath him in the process. The glow from the city cast glossy highlights across his eyes and lips. Damien wanted to kiss them—to keep Matthew from speaking of a future that would never be—but he didn’t want to take agency from the boy he’d decided to spend his life with.
Matthew stopped speaking. He looked into Damien’s eyes.
