After a few minutes of silence, I asked, “What are your thoughts on dinner, pup?”
“Could we just have pizza delivered?”
Brandon’s ultimate comfort food was pizza. And tonight, I’d go for whatever he wanted. For one, he was still talking and hadn’t retreated into himself. He was still confident enough to not only make decisions but to articulate them. And two, he wasn’t upset enough to not have an appetite.
“Absolutely.”
With one arm still around him and my hand resting on his chest, I was able to reach into the pocket of my pants and retrieve my phone. I woke the screen up and held it out in front of us.
“Order for us, pup.”
When he took hold of my phone, I wrapped my arm around his abdomen and kissed his ear. He logged into the pizza app and quickly moved to our favorite. Once he selected it, he murmured the details to make sure everything was correct.
“Large cheese and pepperoni pizza, no seasoning on the crust.” He nodded that everything was correct. “Okay, I got it.”
“Click submit order,” I told him.
Once he hit the order button, a screen popped up telling us the delivery time was about forty-five minutes. He set the phone down on the counter and leaned his head back against me.
“Do you feel like taking your shower before the pizza gets here?”
“Yeah. I want to wash the coffee smell off.”
“I figured as much.”
Brandon was often adamant about taking a shower as soon as he got home from Andrew’s coffee shop. He loved working there to help out, and he actually loved the smell of coffee. But he hated for the smell to remain on his clothes after he got home.
“I won’t be very long. Then I have something I want to talk to you about,” he volunteered.
“Okay. That sounds fine. While you’re taking a shower, I’ll get the plates and drinks.”
“Okay, I’ll be right back.” Brandon took off, jogging toward our room.
The possibility of him going off to cut himself lingered in my mind. However, since he volunteered that he had something to talk to me about, I was more at ease and less inclined to think he’d cut. I busied myself in the kitchen, and while I set the table for us, I tried to think of what it could be that he wanted to talk about. I didn’t have to wait much longer because as soon as I had finished and sat at the breakfast bar, he appeared in bright blue lounge pants, a white t-shirt, and wet hair.
“Feeling better, pup?”
He nodded, a gentle smile tipping the corner of his lips. I was happy that some of the tension he was carrying when he first came home had dissipated.
“Ready to talk now?” I prompted him. It was important to always keep an open line of communication with Brandon so he didn’t fall into himself mentally.
He nodded again and exhaled a heavy breath.
“So, for the past two days, I’ve been thinking about the pictures I helped Andrew hang in Oxygen,” he blurted out as he flopped down on a chair.
Had he been triggered by a picture? Perhaps there had been a photographed scene that resonated with him. A brief flare of panic lanced through me as I reprimanded myself for not asking Andrew about the details of the images. Hindsight, with Brandon’s past, something could have easily set him off. But by judging his calm demeanor, I didn’t think he’d taken offense to them.
“I haven’t seen the pictures yet, but from what Andrew says, they’re quite enticing.”
Brandon laughed and nodded. “Yeah, I think so. Andrew said that a bunch of club members have suggested that Oxygen offer the opportunity for erotic photo shoots in the club. He knows the photographer, and he’s asked him to come to the club to do the sessions. It got me thinking that maybe I’d like to do something like that. What do you think?”
One huge step forward.
The idea of an erotic image either with Brandon, or just Brandon alone, made my body react instantly. As blood surged to the head of my cock, I was suddenly glad I chose to put on loose-fitting lounge pants after my shower. I cleared my throat and reached for a glass of ice water I’d set out for us.
“If you’d like to participate, you have my support. I’ll be very honest with you, I’d love to see you do that.”
While we waited for the pizza, Brandon spoke enthusiastically about the images he’d helped hang in Oxygen. Then while we ate, he continued to talk about the images. I kept waiting for him to tie this into his seemingly bad day, but he didn’t seem to go in that direction. I hated to burst his bubble because seeing him this excited about something was wonderful, but I had to see where the dark side to his day was. My guess was that he’d been too nervous to talk to me about it.
