Page 50 of In at the Deep End

On the cover, two men sat side by side on a beach, their shoulders touching, against the backdrop of a summer sunset.

Matt tilted his head. “Well now…” He slipped the case from the box, heartbeat quickening a little. He aimed the remote at the DVD player, and the drawer slid open. Matt placed the disc into it, then closed it.

The TV switched from standby to on.

“Five minutes,” he told the empty room.

He’d always been terrible at stopping halfway through a story.

Matt sat on the couch, remote in hand, one ear trained towards the door, listening for any sign of Owen’s return. But before long he forgot all about it, finding himself drawn into the story.

Because there was one.

The film wasn’t what he’d expected at all.

Well, parts of it were, but there was far more talking than he’d imagined. The two men bickered, flirted, cooked dinner together, teased each other over coffee. They looked…

Ordinary, like any couple.

Matt had known gay men at university. A few had become friends. Nice enough blokes, but most seemed to live for the next night out, the next hookup, the next funny story about someone they’d gone home with after the clubs closed, guys whose reality didn’t match their Grindr profile. Relationships had always seemed almost incidental.

This was different.

These two were building a life together. They argued over whose turn it was to cook. One left sarcastic notes on the fridge. They finished each other’s sentences. They made each other laugh.

Strip away the fact they were both men, and it could have been any romance.

Somehow, Matt had never seen that before. Then he realised that until this summer, he’d only ever seen one version of being gay.

Owen was showing him another.

Curiosity got the better of him. He skipped forward a few times, not because he was bored, but because he wanted to know what happened next.

The first kiss caught him off guard. It wasn’t hungry or performed, but slow, deliberate, even tender.

Then the love scene began.

Matt stopped touching the remote.

He’d expected something rough, maybe aggressive. Bodies colliding for the camera. Instead, one man rested a hand against the other’s neck and asked in a low, intimate tone, “You okay?”

The other guy smiled and nodded. They kissed again, touching each other with an almost unbearable gentleness, pausing to read one another’s faces as though nothing mattered more than making sure the other felt safe.

Matt couldn’t remember ever seeing anything quite like it. It wasn’t just sex—it was trust, affection…

It was two people making love.

And then he became aware of something else.

His breathing had grown shallow. His pulse was racing. He shifted on the couch, his hips moving slowly as if in synch with the men on the screen, and⁠—

He was hard.

Matt froze.

What the fuck?

He stared at the screen, unable to look away.