Their basket heavy with the essentials as well as too many chocolate biscuits—and Jack tossed in more sweets, he was insatiable—they took it up to the till and paid, doing that weird little shuffle of whose turn it was this time. Theo didn’t enjoy, not really, being treated as if he needed help—but Jack enjoyed having the money to do what he wanted for the first time in his life, so Theo mostly humored him and let him hand over the cash.

It felt—sometimes it felt transactional.

“Am I the woman in this relationship? The little wife with her weekly allowance?”

Jack pursed his lips, half-amused. “You’re the one with the job. I’m the one you come home—” His voice broke and he cleared his throat. “Come home to.”

“True.” Theo nudged him. “Lazy. Anyway, being gay—we’re kind of both men, by definition.”

Jack eased a hand into his pocket, the other gripping onto the grocery bag. “Right.”

He didn’t sound happy. The lightness of their banter gone.

He got like this, sometimes: a little prickly. Theo was never sure when this mood would arise, and too often it led to arguments which echoed their time at Gwynns. He knew that Jack wasn’t all the way ready to—to say the words. For Theo, this life was his new normal, a normal he embraced; more than normal, it was thrilling. This was what he’d been waiting for so long to say out loud, to accept about himself. Somehow, despite the fact that Jack needed and soaked up that reassurance and affection and praise from Theo—despite all the incredible and entirely filthy sex they were having—he wasn’t comfortable yet.

That was okay. It was clear that he still—

They had this time. Them. The possibilities.

They had the clubs and the bars and the music, but they also had the grocers, and the cups of coffee, and washing their laundry in the sink, hanging it on a line. Holding hands just to touch. Fights which led to the deliciousness of making up. And that was new and strange but it was so perfect, maybe, because it stretched out, jet beads on a string, as if it could be like this all the time. For the rest of time.

Maybe this awkward adjustment period was just a necessary step on the way toward—what might come next. It was just the first bit, the stuff that came before the rest.

They walked up the hill toward their apartment with the tiny refrigerator and the cupboards hanging precariously from the plaster walls, and there was something in Theo which was scared, which still hated Jack for making him feel this way, which wasn’t ready to know what it felt like to need someone. And if Jack wasn’t ready to speak about this part of himself, maybe Theo was—at risk. But it was too late, he knew it was—somewhere between dancing and fucking and picking up milk and having someone feed him, Theo had built a life with Jack in it.