He ate. He drank too much coffee. He worked hard, he donated, he raised an incredible child. He did his best.

He thought of Jack, the burdens that he had always carried and his weakness. His cowardice which was borne out of the sins of the people who should have cared for him. Theo hated feeling this pity, this compassion, for the man who’d hurt him so completely. He wished that he could just be angry.

How could one inelegant message send him spiraling like this, imagining—

Jack. His shoulders, so strong, and the way he rubbed his neck. The scent of him that was integral to the attraction, somehow smelling like home and magic and mystery and the sacred. The look on his face when he saw the apartment, and the image that had struck Theo of his own pale skin against the charcoal velvet of the couch, Jack there, maybe kneeling between his legs, all of his tanned flesh exposed.

Theo tore off a piece of his roll. Dipped it in the soup. Chewed.

Waking up with Jack in that huge bed, a sumptuous experience they’d never be able to share. Would they keep to their own sides, needing space in the night, turning their backs out of practicality—or would they curl up in the way they always had, fully intertwined, needing that contact, needing reassurance that they both were there? Eyes opening at first light, meeting, grumpy and disheveled, whispering, Good morning.

New habits to get used to, things they’d developed in their time apart. Little things they didn’t know about each other. Jobs to balance, and taking care of the kids, and returning to that bed at the end of the day and laughing and kissing and sliding together and coming like—

He turned a page in his book. Half reading the words. Ignoring his phone.

The images sped through his mind, unstoppable. A fire in the fireplace, a home which never got cold. A kitchen island with their kids gathered around, no long table or silence or distance. Getting out of this damned mansion, away from his mother—moving in his clothes.

And Jack, there with him always, making the coffee, bringing it up the spiral staircase and spilling some along the way, and Theo giving him shit for his clumsiness. Nakedness and caffeine and all of those little things.