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I thought of Noé’s descriptions of his pictures from this morning.
What if it wasn’t the lens you saw shit through that was fucked up. What if it was actually fucked up because you couldn’t do a single goddamned thing that was worth anything, even with someone else’s mom telling you how.
“Matt. Matty, come back to me.”
“I’m here.”
I wasn’t there.
I washed my hands and squeezed soap into the bowls and the casserole dish, filling them with water to soak. I was standing in someone’s kitchen, washing someone’s dishes, and their house was full of their things. I got to use them. I got to be here. I was welcome to be here whenever I wanted. Wasn’t that nice?
“Matt.” Rhys’s voice was low and calm, and it made something inside me tremble. Not only did I fuck everything up, I also made Rhys take care of me afterward. I winced.
But when his arms came around me, holding me close, I couldn’t pull away. All I could do was hold perfectly still and feel the warmth of his body seeping into mine. Breathe in and out and think for the thousandth time how good Rhys smelled and how just his touch made everything feel better.
“I wanted it to be perfect. I’m sorry,” I murmured, then pressed my mouth against his chest so I couldn’t apologize again.
Rhys squeezed me tight. “You’re perfect. It was such a sweet thought, babe. Wanna order pizza?”
I snorted miserably and then nodded as Rhys’s stomach growled even louder.
That night in bed, Rhys fell asleep almost immediately, wrapped around me from behind, face in my hair. I tugged his arm around my stomach even closer, and arranged it so that his hand was at my throat, and held it there. If my chin dropped forward, I could feel it, pressing into my windpipe. I drifted off with its promise at my throat.
In the middle of the night, I woke suddenly from a dream to find myself gasping, my head fallen forward. Rhys stirred sleepily and draped himself more firmly around me.
“Okay?” he murmured. I turned over so I was facing him and pulled him back over me. “’M gonna squish you.”
Yes. That was what I wanted.
I pressed us together so our hips were flush, Rhys making a happy, sleepy, half turned-on sound as our dicks settled together. He dragged me even closer and leaned over me, thrusting our hips together perfectly. He fell right back to sleep, and I wound my arms around his waist and breathed in slowly through my nose to feel how my chest and stomach couldn’t quite expand fully with his weight on top of me. How my whole world was limited by his body, the edges where I ended and he began intruding into one another.
I lay there in the dark and made each half-breath a reminder that Rhys was here. That he wanted me. That I wasn’t going to sit up in the morning and find him gone. Because in this position, his heavy body stretched over me, touching at every limb, I’d wake up the second he tried to leave me.
* * *
—
We spent a lazy Saturday morning in bed and Rhys told me about the tour. It was going well, he said. A better turnout than they’d expected, more online buzz, and a bigger spike in album sales than they’d anticipated. Rhys’s eyes glowed as he talked about the thrill of being in front of a live audience on the road again. He hadn’t toured since Caleb went into rehab the final time.
He loved the people who were playing with him, he’d developed a brotherly relationship with Mal Omin, the woman who was opening for him, and he’d written two new songs. He played them for me naked, with his guitar in his lap and his eyes closed.
“How do you do that?” I asked, awed, when he was done. It was what I always asked, so I didn’t expect an answer.
Having hung out with Theo and Caleb, I’d found I could see the bits of their speech, or expressions of feeling, or details they noticed that I could draw lines from to their songs. Unlike them, though, Rhys’s songwriting brain seemed so different than his usual brain that hearing his songs was always shocking. It was like he tapped into a part of himself that I had no access to at all.
This time, though, instead of a grin and a kiss, or a shy eyebrow raise in response to my question, Rhys said, “I was missing you and that’s what came out.”
I swallowed hard and put a hand on his thigh so I could feel the music reverberating through his body. “Play them again.”
Caleb and Theo brought food over for dinner and I got to hear all the details about tour and venues and sound equipment that Rhys had edited out for me.
