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“Travis, his boyfriend and dom,” Travis says easily as he reaches out a hand toward Wells. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“Ah. The man that comes with an armed guard.” Wells shakes Travis’s hand, his smile kind. “It’s nice to meet you as well.”
Travis laughs. “No armed guards tonight, don’t worry.”
“Probably a good idea. I doubt anyone here would enjoy getting the piss scared out of them tonight.”
“I didn’t get the piss scared out of me,” Hunter grumbles. He fixes an impressive glare on Wells. “It startled me. You would have been startled too.”
“Remember when I startled you that one time, Master? When you were cooking?” Jax giggles at his own memory. “You screamed!”
Wells narrows his eyes and Jax’s smile slips. “Yes, I recall. Do you recall all of the times I’ve made you scream, pet? Or would you like me to remind you of them?”
“I - uh - I remember.” Jax quickly looks around, then randomly points across the room. “I need to go talk to - uh - them. Bye!”
Wells and Hunter chuckle at his quick escape, and even Travis watches in amusement. Carter can’t help his frown though, “Is he in trouble?”
“Not at all.” Wells smiles at Carter, his eyes full of mischief. “My pet is a very good boy. He’s particularly sassy tonight, but I’m allowing it. He’s nervous about the show. He knows where his lines are. That was just us teasing.”
“So… you can still be teasing and, like, playful? Even though you’re master and pet?”
Wells tilts his head, eyeing Carter. Then he glances at Travis. “That’s up to you and your dom. Everyone is different. But yes, that’s the relationship Jax and I have. I enjoy his personality a great deal. I don’t want a blank slate of a boy.”
“There’s a time and a place,” Hunter explains. “A balance. You’ll need to find that together, you and Travis, if you want to be happy. Which means you’ll need to talk about what you both want.”
“And what you both need,” Wells adds. “And don’t forget that sometimes the two things are different.”
“Thank you,” Travis says in a surprisingly serious tone. He wraps an arm around Carter and smiles down at him. “I think we just found our topic for tonight’s dinner conversation.”
Carter wrinkles his nose. “Boring dinner conversation.”
“If it’s boring,” Hunter says with a wiggle of his eyebrows. “You’re doing it wrong.”
After debating between the only two sit-down restaurants in the small college town - a pizzeria and the bar and grill Carter works at - Carter and Travis decide to go to Carter’s apartment instead. Carter has frozen cheese stuffed raviolis, chicken, and alfredo sauce. Not very fancy, but it’s not like he could cook anything fancy anyway. While Carter gets the ingredients out, Travis finds a bottle of wine and pours them each a glass.
“I didn’t know you could cook,” Travis says, taking a seat at the little breakfast island that separates the kitchen from the living room.
“I can’t, really.” Carter starts slicing the chicken, only because that’s what his mom always did when she made chicken on the stove top. Probably because it cooks faster? And he knows it shouldn’t be pink anymore in the middle, so that’s how he’ll know when it’s done? Hopefully? “There are no promises this is going to be edible.”
Travis chuckles. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
“What about you? Can you cook?”
“I don’t know. I used to be able to hold my own with easy stuff. Ramen noodles. Mac ‘n cheese. Heating up chicken nuggets.”
Carter laughs softly. “I can’t imagine you eating any of that stuff.”
“Well, I was a teenager the last time I had to cook for myself.”
“True.” Carter frowns at the bag of frozen raviolis, reading the instructions. They seem… easy enough. “My aunt that took care of me was a great cook.”
“I had one foster mom who was first generation Mexican-American. She cooked the best fucking food ever.”
Carter dumps the raviolis in the boiling water, drops the chicken into the skillet, and then turns to give Travis his full attention. He can’t help but smile a little. It’s nice to talk about this kind of stuff instead of the shitstorm that’s been their life since they’ve met. It’s nice to get to know Travis, as opposed to Nathan. “What was your favorite dish?”
“Barbacoa tacos.” He sighs wistfully, a soft smile on his lips. “So. Fucking. Good. We’d get them every time the check from the government came. She’d make barbacoa tacos and we’d all sit around the table and tell her what we had coming up the next month. Field trips. School physicals needed. Football games. Whatever else. She’d budget it, and we’d eat barbacoa tacos, and then we’d spend the rest of the month skimping.”
“She sounds great.”
