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“Okay, well,” Leo started, but Damon cut him off.
“What about now?”
Leo frowned, tilting his head slightly in confusion.
Damon seemed to be bracing himself for something. “You said that you weren’t ready for what we were offering then, but what about now?”
Leo opened his mouth, stunned. “You…I mean, it’s been months. I don’t expect you guys to still want that.”
Josh laughed faintly, a strained thing. “We do. I mean, we miss you a lot. And…” he looked back at Damon, and something passed between them before he turned to Leo. “We would definitely love to have you in our lives in any way, but if you wanted to just…go on a date with us. That would be nice.”
Leo couldn’t process for a second. It’d been months. Months. He had just come to put some demons to rest. And, sure, he’d fantasised about this happening once or twice, but he hadn’t let himself think about that too often.
“You don’t have to,” Damon said, voice deep but quiet. “If you don’t want—”
“Yes. I mean, fuck, yeah, I would really like to go on a date with you guys. I mean, I’m not doing the whole sex work thing anymore…”
“We mean a real date. A movie and some dinner out somewhere. Some ice cream,” Josh said.
Leo could feel the smile growing on his face. “Ice cream sounds amazing.”
They smiled back. “Yeah?” Damon asked.
“Yeah.”
“Okay. Wow, okay,” Josh babbled. “Uhm…you still have our number?”
“Not in my real phone. Here, let me give you mine.”
Leo’s hands shook as he input the number into Damon’s phone, his adrenalin pumping.
His real number, the one that was just him, with no agency in the middle. With nothing to hide him or protect him from what this could be.
Leo smiled as he handed the phone back, his heart pounding with possibility.
ELEVEN
Whenhewaslittle,after his mom died, Leo’s dad would do this thing where he’d ignore Leo completely if he was being annoying. Leo could ask him a question or make noise or cry and his dad would walk right past him, not even sparing him a glance.
It was eerie how his dad didn’t even blink an eye at Leo’s existence, worse than being shouted at, even.
There was a difference between being told he was nothing and actually experiencing it.
He’d always start crying when his sister came home and said hi to him, as if taking solid form hurt, his atoms congealing again instead of drifting aimlessly in space.
That was kind of what it felt like with Josh and Damon, in retrospect. They had a way of looking at him, even when they had just met, that magnetised all Leo’s parts until he was a whole thing. He wasn’t just something to fuck, or something to own, but his own creature worthy of being seen.
The last few months, Leo had worked at feeling whole. At seeing himself, instead of waiting for someone to do it for him.
Part of him wondered if, after all that, it’d be the same with Josh and Damon as it was before he quit sex work. If they’d lost their window of opportunity—if Leo had moved past the self that felt so comfortable with them.
It turned out he needn’t have worried.
For their first real date, they ended up going bowling at Melody Lane near where Leo lived. Leo’s heart started pounding as soon as he saw Josh and Damon standing outside the building, talking animatedly about something, although they stopped and smiled when they spotted him.
“Hi!” Josh chirped happily, followed by Damon’s much more subdued, “Hello.”
“Hey,” Leo greeted. He could feel his cheeks flushing because this was real. He didn’t have the excuse of a session between them, or a rough heat to keep them wanting him.
