Shaw nodded. He was still trying to say he was sorry. But he nodded.

With a single twist of his hands, Matty pulled the band free, and Shaw’s hair spilled down, a silken whisper against his neck, his shoulders, his back. It raised goosebumps all over him, and suddenly Shaw was crying. Huge, racking sobs that shook him, that sent his hair swishing across his back like a cold draft.

“I’m—I’m sorr—I’m sorry—”

He couldn’t even say what it was because it wasn’t any one thing. It wasn’t the fact that it was Matty instead of North. It wasn’t the fact that it was all those wasted years. It wasn’t the fear or the desire or pent-up need. It was a little of all of them. It was more. It came from deep places, primal places that Shaw had cordoned off long ago and now broke forth like artesian springs.

“Don’t be sorry, don’t be sorry, don’t.” Matty was doing some kind of complicated acrobatics that ended with Shaw on the couch and Matty kneeling on the floor. Matty’s mouth was dry and hot like a burning page of poems. He kissed the hollow of Shaw’s neck. He kissed the center of his chest. He kissed the wiry trail of hair over those little abdominal bumps. And then Matty looked up. Shaw was wiping his eyes, trying to breathe a single, normal breath, and he couldn’t meet Matty’s gaze. He called himself a fucking coward a few times in his head and reminded himself of all the wasted years. His foot scuffed over a forgotten piece of popcorn and he thought, very clearly through the haze of hormones, that he could still go back: back to weekend movies with North, back to dancing around each other, back to waiting for something that was never, ever going to happen. And then he chuffed a breath and nodded.

Matty’s breath. Shaw hadn’t expected it, hadn’t even guessed how it would feel when Matty tugged his pants down and warm breath coasted in over Shaw’s dick. It was beyond anything Shaw had ever felt. If his breath felt this good, if his breath made Shaw keen a high note in his throat, and lurch like his whole body might come apart—if just his breath did that, what would the rest of it be like?

Then Shaw lurched again, but this time for a different reason. Matty’s fingers were cold where they touched low on Shaw’s hip, the hooked J where the scar terminated. Shaw knew how the skin felt there: textured and raised, an ugly line against everything else. Matty traced it across Shaw’s thigh, following it between Shaw’s legs, his touch like a static spark that made Shaw groan and spread his knees. The scar was ugliest here where it cut into Shaw’s balls, where it had almost taken them completely off and only hours of surgery had managed to keep Shaw relatively intact. Matty paused here. And then he took the sack in one hand, the velvet pad of his thumb scraping along the scar tissue, and Shaw began to shake.