I sigh and look up at his huge puppy dog eyes. “It's fine.” I try to soothe him, “Um, yes my mom liked to cook.” I answer. My eyes drift down to the table and I mentally trace the pattern of whorls in my head while my thoughts go off into a different direction, away from here, where two blondes are going to be waiting for me in a couple of hours. I’d been trying to ignore it by cooking, but Walt had brought it up anyway. Today I finally might get answers for her death, for everything, but now that it’s here I’m not sure that I want them. What if it’s like Pandora’s box and once I open the lid there’s no going back. Dad kept it a secret for a reason and with our kind that’s a feat.

Telepathy makes any type of dishonesty practically impossible, but even with me in and out of his head throughout my entire childhood I never learned squat. He was always so careful with his thoughts, disciplined beyond belief. Thinking back on it now it almost seems impossible that I never gleaned anything from him.

“Matty?” Walt speaks up and draws me back from my spiraling thoughts.

“It's fine.” I say again. “You can ask me anything you want.” And he can. I just hadn’t been prepared for the question and the timing for dredging up painful memories is not really good, but I also don’t want to lie to him.

Walt gives me a sad smile and I know that he’s not going to ask me anymore questions. He’s not that type of person. “Um on a different note—I was thinking last night about us and what you were saying yesterday and I think I figured out what changed.” I smile and wait for his big reveal. If he gets it right I’ll honestly be shocked. Encouraged by my look he continues on, “So it’s been about half a year since we started… this.” He points out as he gestures between us.

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I nod my head. “Yes.” I agree, and then add on, “I remember quite a number of pining looks you gave me when you first got back before you even attempted to have a conversation with me.”

Walt’s face blushes a bit and he mumbles, “Well, you’re kinda intimidating.”

“I weigh like a 130 pounds.” I point out. I am all skin and bone especially compared to Walt. He’s only a few inches taller than me, but he has wide shoulders and a broad chest. He’s also incredibly muscular. 

“That doesn’t matter anyway.” Walt hurriedly tries to move past his past shyness. “What I’m trying to say is that when we did finally get together it sort of just happened, right?”

I nod my head. It had. The moment had been the result of years of cumulative waiting and yearning all brought to exasperation within the short couple of months that we’d been reunited.

“Right.” He sounds so serious it’s cute. He frowns a bit as he continues, “And then it just kept happening.” He points out. I smirk a bit at the memories this statement conjures up. Yes, it had kept happening, quite a lot, and in a few unconventional places as well. “And we never really talked about it. We just sort of went with it. And I realized last night as I was falling asleep that that’s not how relationships are supposed to work, right?” He stares at me wide-eyed, “We're supposed to talk about it and figure out what we both want and what will work best… Sort of like a job interview.” He looks pleased with his final assessment, but then I laugh at the last part without thinking, when I see his expression turned worried though I stop.

I quickly stand up and walk over to his side of the table where I lean in and kiss him to soothe his anxieties. It’s easy to forget how sensitive Walt can be sometimes. “You're absolutely 

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right.” I agree with him. I trail my fingers into his thick hair as his face relaxes. With the simple touch though my telepathic abilities instinctually reach out only to be met with a wall of static. I don’t back away though, instead I try to smile through it.

“But even though we talked about it you said that you didn’t want anything to change.” He points out as he looks up at me. “But it did change because we talked about it.”

Well damn. Walt chose quite the morning to be intuitive. I sit myself down on his lap and bury my face in the hollow of his neck simply because I feel like it. I feel his hands grab hold of my waist. They’re soft hands. His job at the police station isn’t the most rough and tumble job out there. It’s mostly boring paperwork and corralling drunks into cells. Not like what I do. I’m constantly using my hands to make things and getting them dirty. I have years of built up callouses that have left them hard and tough.

“Don't say that.” I mumble quietly. Our relationship can’t change. No matter how much I want it to. No matter how much it already has. I’d been unhappy with the way things had been and admittedly more content after we’d talked things out, but before everything that had happened between us had been something that had just happened and then kept happening. Just like how Walt had described. Now though, now that we’ve talked about it, it’s not something that’s just happening it’s an arrangement.

If a soldier was to capture me now would I be able to protect Walt from them? If they forced their way into my thoughts and memories could I keep these feelings a secret?

Walt’s hands move to cradle my face. “What’s wrong?” He asks as his thumb swipes away a few hot tears that had fallen without my permission.