And if we came out? That would only make it worse. Give Greer the perfect excuse of it affecting the team and trade Étienne even faster.
I was watching the person I cared about the most slowly lose everything, and I didn’t know how to help him.
Saturday evening, we ordered Mexican takeout and settled on the couch. Étienne handed me a PlayStation controller while he grabbed his own.
“Okay,” he said, navigating to a game I’d never heard of. “Co-op mode. This is a team effort.”
“I don’t really play video games.”
“You’re about to.” He grinned and started the level. “Just follow my lead.”
The game was some kind of sci-fi adventure that required coordination. Étienne moved his character with practiced ease while I fumbled with the buttons, trying to remember which one made me shoot and which one made me jump.
“Cover me while I hack this terminal,” he said, his fingers moving rapidly across the controller.
“I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“Just shoot anything that moves. Left trigger to aim, right trigger to fire.”
I managed to keep the enemies off him long enough for him to complete the objective, though my aim was terrible and I died twice.
“Yes!” He threw his controller down when we succeeded and held up his hand for a high-five. “That’s what I’m talking about!”
I laughed and slapped his hand, caught up in his enthusiasm. We celebrated like we’d just won a playoff game, not completed a single level of a video game.
“We’re good at this,” he said, picking up his controller again for the next level.
“At video games?”
“At teamwork. In digital environments, anyway.” He glanced at me. “We work well together.” His expression changed—his eyes softened, his mouth curved into something that wasn’t quite a smile but was close. That look he’d been giving me lately, the one that felt like more than friendship but less than he was ready to name. Like he was thinking something he didn’t have words for yet.
“Yeah.” I set my controller aside and pulled him closer, the game forgotten. “We do.”
He discarded his controller, stood, and held out his hand. “Come here.” He tugged me upstairs to the bedroom.
“Bossy.”
“You like it.”
He wasn’t wrong.
In bed, we had developed a comfortable rhythm. We knew what the other liked now, knew how to read responses, knew how to make each other fall apart.
His hands mapped my body with familiar confidence, finding all the places that made me gasp. His mouth followed, kissing a path down my neck, teasing a pebbled nipple, nipping at the juncture of my thigh.
When he enveloped my throbbing cock with his hot, wet mouth, I threaded my fingers through his hair and watched him with something that I couldn’t let myself say yet.
After he made me come so hard I saw stars, he rose, frantically took himself in hand, and shot ropes of cum onto my abs. When we were both drained and catching our breath, I pulled him down to kiss him properly. Tasting myself on his lips, not caring, just needing the connection.
After he cleaned my stomach with tissues from the box on the nightstand, he settled beside me. He pulled me against the light dusting of hair on his chest, and I rested my head on his shoulder.
“I… care about you,” I said quietly. “A lot. More than I probably should.”
“There’s no ‘should’ about caring.” His hand cupped my face, tilting it up to look at him. “And I care about you too. So much it scares me sometimes.”
He kissed me softly. “Whatever this is—whatever we’re building—it matters. You matter. More than anything.”
It wasn’t “I love you.”
