Chapter Twenty
Danny had barely been able to contain his excitement all afternoon, and now that Eliot was sitting at his dinner table, waiting to eat, he was having an even harder time. He didn’t want to scare Eliot away with his enthusiasm, but it was hard to keep it under control.
This was becoming their regular thing, now. It wasn’t a one-off, and Eliot hadn’t gotten tired of him. It wasn’t just about sex, either.
This was something real, and special, and Danny couldn’t stop himself from grinning every time he thought about it. He loved spending time with Eliot, and Eliot seemed to be into it, too.
“You know, if someone had told me a while ago that I’d be voluntarily waiting for a professional athlete to make dinner now, I wouldn’t have believed them,” Eliot said, looking over at Danny with his chin resting in his hand.
“Are you saying sports guys can’t cook?” Danny raised an eyebrow.
Eliot shook his head. “No, not at all. I’m seriously impressed that you can, and you didn’t have to, by the way.” He cleared his throat. “Don’t get weird about this, but I was a little scared coming here the first time.”
“That’s not weird.” Danny said. “I was a stranger, and it was your first big assignment way outside your comfort zone.”
“No, I was scared ofyou. Of how you might react to me.”
Danny looked up. Eliot’s tone had changed, there was a catch in his voice. He didn’t want to push him to keep going, but he could tell there was more Eliot wanted to say.
“I, umm…” Eliot paused to swallow. Danny got to work plating up the pasta he’d made for dinner, waiting to hear what Eliot had to say. “People like you did not treat people like me well when I was younger, is all. I was the kid wearing eyeliner and lip gloss and pink t-shirts, and it just… didn’t go over well. But you’re not like that, and I’m sorry for ever thinking you would be.”
Danny’s heart sank. Needing a moment to think about what he was going to say in response, he gathered the plates and brought them over to the table, setting one down in front of Eliot and the other in front of the seat opposite him.
“I’m sorry,” Danny said. “And I understand, and I don’t blame you. I saw what kids like me did to kids like you when I was in high school, and I wish I could tell you I stopped it, but I didn’t. I should have.”
Eliot shook his head. “No. You were scared of them turning on you as well. I don’t blame you. That’s… kind of what I’m trying to say, here. I wanted to hate you when I first met you, but you made that impossible from pretty much the first moment. My point is, I like you a lot.”
Danny smiled at that, picking up his fork and poking at dinner. He was starving, but he needed a moment to recover. Eliot didn’t open up like this. He wasn’t a vulnerable kind of person. This was a special, important moment, and Danny wanted to appreciate it as such.
“Thank you,” he responded eventually. “For telling me, and for trusting me.”
“You’re welcome.” Eliot smiled a tiny smile. “I was scared of telling you that, too, but it seemed important. It was important to me, anyway.”
“If it’s important to you, it’s important to me,” Danny said. He was surprised by how much he meant it. Eliot… Eliot was important to him, and there was no way of getting around that.
“I, uh,” he started, figuring that if they were doing heart-to-heart talks, now was a good time to get his own worries off his chest. “I told you when I asked you to pretend to be my boyfriend that I wasn’t ready for a real relationship, and I just… I want you to know that I’m a little scared of all this, and I’m not sure where it’s going, but I’d like to try. With you. If we can kinda take it slow?”
Eliot, who’d already started in on dinner, chewed and swallowed quickly. “Slow is fine. Good, even. I’m not very good at relationships, either. All of my previous ones have been… weird. Not that this isn’t weird.”
Danny chuckled, twirling his pasta around his fork. “It is a little weird. Weird isn’t always bad, though. I just want to give this a chance to turn into something. I mean, I’m scared that I’m doing exactly what I was afraid of, latching onto the first person to show me a little affection, but it doesn’t feel like that. And I trust you.”
“I appreciate that,” Eliot said. “Obviously, you only have my word for this, but I’d never intentionally hurt you. I kinda have a thing for you.”
Shifting in his chair, Danny smiled a small, shy smile down at his plate. He’d never been with someone like Eliot before, and he felt so lucky to have him now. It never would have occurred to him to look for someone like Eliot, someone so unlike himself.
He owed Walter one for the idea.
“That’s good, ‘cause I kind of have a thing for you, too.” Danny grinned. “So, you wanna tell me about your day? Or anything at all, really. What’s happening at work? Tell me everything.”
He knew he sounded over excited, but that was because hewas. This was the first time in Danny’s life where he’d had the opportunity to share more of himself than just his body with another person. Real relationships had been impossible before, the fear of being outed too great.
Now, he didn’t have to worry about any of that. With Eliot, he was safe. He could have a nice, normal relationship.
“My editor is trying to give me a chance to do some other stuff. I should be working on something right now, but I can get up early again and work on it then. Getting to do this with you is worth it.”
Danny smiled at that. Eliot really did think he was worth a little inconvenience. Maybe it wasn’t much, maybe he was getting too excited over nothing, but it seemed like a lot.
“So your editor is like your boss, right?” Danny asked. The world of journalism was more or less a mystery to him, despite the fact that he had a lot of contact with them.
