Page 79 of Just Past Two

Matthew stifled another laugh. “No, you’ve basically seen the place. But I’ve got a friend at work who does metalwork sculpting.” Matthew thought of Caleb, who he knew had some kind of setup for welding and construction. “I’ll bet I could use his workshop.”

“We.” Silas turned back to the program. “I’m going to be invested in this project, so I’m going to see it through to completion. No going off without me.”

Matthew very much wanted to build this with Silas, actually, so he offered no protest. He watched as Silas opened a new file and started creating a diagram with a few clicks of the mouse. After a few minutes, Silas noticed him watching. “You want to learn how to use this?”

Suddenly, Matthew felt awkward, like he was back in high school struggling with calculus again. “I don’t know. It looks complicated.”

“Yes, but you’re smart. You can learn. Here, let me show you the parts of the workstation.”

For the next half hour, as he effortlessly designed a cat wheelchair, Silas explained the features of the CAD program he was using to Matthew, who absorbed all of it and even understood. Silas was a brusque, direct teacher, but he was also clear, and under his instruction, Matthew found himself picking up the rough overview of the program. They moved Zuul’s crate into the living room so she could watch them, sprawled out on her blanket, eyeing them both. She submitted to being measured for the chair, letting Matthew hold her while Silas used a tape measure to check the length of her legs and torso. They took a break for sandwiches for lunch, after which Silas didn’t take his seat in front of the laptop again, instead standing nearby.

“Here, you try it.” He pointed to the laptop. “Go ahead. I saved the file already, so you can’t screw anything up.”

Matthew felt a moment of performance anxiety. “I don’t know. I’ve barely figured it out.”

Silas rolled his eyes. “Come on, you’re fine. Sit there.” Moving around to Matthew’s other side, he shoved him out of the chair. Laughing, Matthew moved over and took the seat in front of Silas’s laptop. From this perspective, the screen in front of him looked like it was in a foreign language. As a programmer, he hated sitting in front of a computer screen and not fully understanding everything. His job depended on his instant and intuitive knowledge of his task, and CAD was a different animal.

“Start by changing the dimensions of what we have here.” Silas took Matthew’s seat and scooted in close. Much closer than Matthew had been, in fact, his torso brushing Matthew’s arm as he leaned in. Matthew was suddenly aware that the last time he’d seen Silas, they’d ended up in bed, having some overwhelmingly wonderful sex. His body temperature rose as he thought about it.

Silas stretched one arm across the back of Matthew’s chair to let him lean even closer. “Good. Try examining it from another direction.”

Under Silas’s instructions, Matthew tried new tasks in CAD, gradually gaining confidence in the drafting program. He hadn’t thought he would be good at something like this. Generally, he’d become comfortable sticking with the familiar when it came to technology, and consequently it had been a while since he’d tried something new. He kept becoming distracted by Silas’s proximity, but other than that, he was doing quite well.

“So can I get this program for my computer?” Matthew looked over at Silas, who had been watching him with interest the entire time.

There was a pause where Silas watched Matthew without seeming to have heard him, and then he came back to himself. “Oh. Sure. There are some basic free CAD programs out there. If you want something more specialized, you’ll have to buy it, but the free programs should be fine for now.”

Matthew eyed him warily, because the distraction wasn’t normal for Silas. “You all right, there?”

Silas licked his lips, color rising high in his cheeks. “I was thinking about kissing you.”

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Well, he hadn’t exactly planned to come right out and say it, but the words were out of Silas’s mouth before he could think clearly about his options. Matthew’s eyes widened for an instant before his expression settled into that mischievous face that Silas was coming to love and loathe in equal parts. He loved it for what it meant for his body, but he loathed it for the way he ended up desperate and needy for it.

He hadn’t been able to get Matthew out of his mind all week, and it was causing him distractions at work. No one distracted him from his work, ever—until now. Unfortunately, he couldn’t go back in time to unmeet Matthew—and, more important, a small part of him knew he didn’t want to.

One option was to ignore Matthew altogether. He had tried that during the week, not calling or texting, pretending the other man didn’t exist. Since they hadn’t made any concrete plans to see each other again after their tryst the week before, this hadn’t been too difficult. Even so, the only result of that experiment was that he kept obsessing about work, and his sex dreams were keeping him up as much as his nightmares. The other option was to try to get Matthew out of his system. His body’s urges were inconvenient, and he’d felt a pressing need to take care of them almost every day this past week. Maybe if they had sex again, or even regularly, he could focus: at work, he could be thinking about work, and at home, he would be able to put work aside when he needed to sleep. Maybe, he’d convinced himself, if he let himself lose control with Matthew, he wouldn’t be at risk of losing control anywhere else.

This was the option he was trying out now. Matthew seemed amenable to the idea, at least, if Silas was correctly interpreting the expression on his face.

“You want to kiss me?” Matthew shifted in his chair so he was facing Silas, a teasing grin playing about his lips. “So why don’t you kiss me?”

“I thought it was polite to ask.” Silas smiled back. He was starting to enjoy this teasing, but he wanted the kiss even more, so he leaned forward and pressed his mouth against Matthew’s. Matthew was a responsive kisser. Within moments, Silas was having trouble remembering anything about his next steps, focused instead on the play of Matthew’s tongue with his.

Matthew gently pulled away. “So is this just about kissing, or what?”

“No.” Silas moved one hand to Matthew’s thigh, a deliberate action that felt risky and yet right. “I was thinking it would also be nice to have sex with you again.”

Matthew chuckled. “Nice? It would be nice to have sex with me again?”

Silas kept his neutral expression as best as he could. “Yes, I think so. I also think you’ve been taking the lead far too much, and I should reciprocate.” He got up and reached out for Matthew. So far, so good. “Are you coming?”

Matthew took his hand. “Not yet, but I hope we’re headed that way.”

Silas rolled his eyes. “That’s a terrible joke.”

“I know. You’ll have to punish me for it.” Matthew let Silas lead him into the bedroom.