“It was also fake.”
“Wasfake,” Andrew emphasizes.
“Exactly my point. Things change.” Nicholas palms the soft flesh of Andrew’s tummy, trying to hitch him closer. If he could literally envelop Andrew and keep him forever, he thinks he would.
“I love this house,” Andrew whispers. “The beach, the colors…that you’re in it. It feels like a home.”
“Stay,” Nicholas demands. “As long as you want.”
Forever, Nicholas hopes.
“It’s a big decision, you might get sick of me.”
“I’m off for the season. You’re about to get real sick of me, princess.”
“I wouldn’t mind that,” Andrew says around a yawn. “I like being around you.”
That simple sentence is the most powerful thing anyone has ever said to Nicholas.
“I like being around you, too.”
Andrew rolls over, his normally tamed hair askew and his dark eyes almost black in the low light that spills out of the cracked bathroom door where a light got left on. Nicholas tracesAndrew’s face, memorizing the sharp slant of his jaw and the curves of his lips. Andrew is so beautiful.
“This is crazy. It’s crazy, right? Who moves in with a man they’ve only been dating a few weeks.”
“Someone who fake dates a man they don’t know.”
“Fuck off,” Andrew laughs, a bit of color returning to his cheeks. “It’s not like me. It’s…impulsive and unplanned.”
“Is that what you want?” Nicholas asks, pressing his lips to Andrew’s forehead. He’s still warmer than he’d like, but the fever that consumed him earlier seems to have subsided enough to return some of his clarity.
“I—” but Andrew pauses. “Yes. I want you, Nicki. If you’ll have me. I’m never going to get easier though.”
“Me either.”
“I’ll always be…be like me.”
“I should fucking hope so.”
“So, we’re doing this?”
“Fuck yeah, we’re doing this.”
Andrew smiles, looking at Nicholas like he hung the fucking moon, and he is ruined. Utterly and completely. He would do fucking anything for this man, and it looks like he might be allowed to prove that.
* * *
“Areyou sure you’re good to fly so soon after being sick?”
“I had the flu, not a life-threatening disease, Nicki. I’m fine. Besides, it's a little late to be asking me this in the airport.”
Nicholas frowns. Maybe they shouldn’t be going. He’d been so sure he wanted to do this, but the closer they get to boarding, the less certain he becomes.
He hasn’t been back to his childhood home in years.
The last time he saw his mother or father in person was almost two years ago, and it turned out his mother hadn’t invited him to lunch to celebrate his birthday, but to get his signature on the updated terms of his inheritance. He’s not even sure if she remembered it was his birthday until he told her.
After that lunch, he’d picked up the first couple to jointly seem interested in him at the bar, fucked them in the bathroom loud enough someone called security and made sure he left enough of a mess to get his name splashed across the tabloids.
