The rain had only just started. Boxes the shopkeeper hadn’t managed to bring inside were still piled under the storefront awning, and Cade helped move them closer to the door. With his phone battery down to its last few percent, he considered the journey home and decided to grab something to eat at a small café near the bus stop first.

He had barely emerged from the alley when he spotted a familiar man across the street, someone he hadn’t expected to see there at all.

The hood caught his attention first. Vincent usually dressed as if a trip to buy bread might turn into an important board meeting. Right now he was wearing a black hoodie, with a paper bag tucked under one arm. Cade had just decided he’d mistaken a stranger for him when the man lifted his head. One look at that familiar face settled it. Cade crossed the street without waiting to be called over.

“What’s with the makeover?” he asked, stopping beside him and tugging at one of the hood strings. “Did somebody steal all your proper clothes?”

The man looked at his hand, then at his face. His answer took a beat too long, but Cade didn’t notice the hesitation.

“You really hate the way I normally dress that much?”

His voice sounded a little more relaxed than usual, but Cade recognized it at once.

“What? No. You look sexy in anything. Come on, grab a quick bite with me, will you?” He pointed toward the café and started for the door. Behind him, everything went quiet for a moment. When Cade looked back, the man was still standing by the crossing, watching him.

“You said you were busy today. Am I interrupting something?”

“No. Come on.”

There were only a few customers left inside, so Cade had no trouble finding a table by the fogged-up window.

“Remember that new project I told you about? Turns out this cinema was my favorite place when I was a kid!”

“Oh…”

“Rita promised me free tickets to their new movie!”

“Rita… remind me who Rita is?”

Vincent was usually good with his clients’ names. Cade decided he’d probably been too scattered when he described the cinema over the phone that morning, and explained it all again. The man listened closely, hardly looking away. It was nicer than their usual conversations, when Vincent’s work phone so often stole his attention.

When their food arrived, the man stole a fry from Cade’s plate. Cade stopped mid-sentence and stared at his hand in theatrical outrage. Vincent might order a second portion if Cade’s food looked particularly good, but to steal a bite so shamelessly? Catching his expression, the man put one fry back. Cade burst out laughing. Apparently, this new stage of their relationship came with unexpected consequences.

“One week of being official and you’re already stealing my dinner,” he observed, pushing his plate toward the middle of the table. “I should’ve offered you a taste while you were still trying to impress me.”

The man lowered his eyes to the food. “Maybe you’re just used to one version of someone,” he said with unexpected seriousness, “and anything different seems strange to you…”

The careful phrasing caught Cade off guard. Before he could ask about it, the waiter appeared at their table.

“Anything else I can get you?”

“Oh… no, thank you.”

“Thanks.”

The conversation died again. Cade was beginning to feel unsettled by the evening, so he tried talking about work instead.

His phone died just as he was about to show a picture of the cinema’s stripped-down foyer. He slipped it into his pocket and suggested showing the materials at home. The man asked, looking startled, what he meant.

“Hey. Eighty-one Field Street, apartment fifteen? Ring any bells?” Cade laughed. “What’s wrong with you today? You’re starting to scare me.”

“Too much work. Sorry.”

“So? Are you taking the very unsubtle hint that we should continue this at my place?”

On the way there, the conversation drifted back to the cinema. To Cade’s surprise, his boyfriend seemed to understand exactly why he didn’t want to turn the old photographs into sentimental advertisements. He suggested leaving the mark of a paper clip on one image instead of making the surface look perfect. Cade looked at him with renewed interest. Vincent usually judged the final result but rarely got involved in the creative process. That attention to detail felt like proof they were finally moving beyond the sort of meetings they’d had before.

At the apartment, Cade switched on the soft kitchen light and left the bag containing their leftovers on the table. The man remained by the door, as if his boyfriend’s home had taken him by surprise.

“Hey. What are you standing there for?”

Vincent had never examined his hallway with that kind of curiosity. Normally he’d toss his coat aside without giving the little things a second glance. Cade chalked it up to exhaustion, stepped closer, and pulled the damp hoodie off his shoulders himself. Warm skin met his fingertips, and the evening’s oddness immediately seemed less important.

The man caught his wrist, but not in Vincent’s usual way. The gesture lacked both the firmness and the practiced restraint Cade expected. Cade smirked, called him a ridiculous lovesick snob, and leaned in first. The man’s gaze darted to his mouth and back to his eyes. That undisguised hunger looked like another side of someone Cade thought he knew.

The kiss began more cautiously than Cade had expected. The man barely brushed his lips against Cade’s, as though testing the waters, as though he still wasn’t sure how far he was allowed to go. Then Cade parted his lips, and everything changed at once. A hand slid to the back of his head. Fingers tangled in his hair, holding him close as the kiss turned wetter, deeper. Cade could only snatch a breath in the tiny gaps between kisses, because the man kept finding his mouth again before he’d properly inhaled.

Vincent usually knew how to stop at the exact second desire threatened to turn into a loss of control. Tonight, that line seemed not to exist. Cade felt the man’s breath against his face and heard the little broken sounds escaping between kisses.

For the first time all evening, Cade stopped asking himself why the person he loved was acting so strangely. His body had come up with an answer he liked far too much: maybe Vincent had finally stopped holding back with him.

Cade dragged his own hoodie over his head. The fabric snagged in his hair, and the man laughed right against his mouth before kissing him again, smothering Cade’s indignant complaint. They knocked into the hall cabinet, then the bedroom doorframe. Neither of them wanted to pull away far enough to walk through a doorway properly. Naked skin felt familiar beneath Cade’s palms, yet the response was different. Where Vincent would ordinarily tense at a touch that went too far, this Vincent pressed himself closer. Cade ran his hands down his back, lingered lower, and felt his breathing falter immediately. The man didn’t take Cade’s hand off his ass. Quite the opposite: he covered it with his own and pressed it harder against himself, as though that was precisely what he’d been waiting for.

Heat shot through Cade. For eight months, he’d been used to following someone else’s lead. But right now…

“Ah!”

The first real, deep moan that escaped the man’s mouth made Cade stop for a second. The sound was so unfamiliar he wanted to hear it again, just to be certain he hadn’t imagined it. The man noticed his pause and looked up at him, still breathing hard. Cade slowly ran his thumb over his lower lip and, with a smirk, asked where the hell he’d been hiding this side of himself. The look he got in return was shy and so openly hungry that Cade’s own smile vanished. The man kissed his thumb and looked up again. That tiny, brazen gesture sent such a rush of blood to Cade’s cock that it almost hurt.

“You’re like a completely different person tonight,” Cade said, no longer joking.

The man leaned in, kissed the corner of his mouth, and answered, “You know less about me than you think.”

After everything strange that had happened tonight, those words should have put Cade on his guard. But the voice was low, the lips too close. He only grinned, wrapped an arm around the man’s waist, and pulled him into the bedroom.

At the edge of the bed, the man suddenly stopped. Cade thought for a second that he’d changed his mind, but the eyes meeting his were still dark with want. Vincent almost never asked for anything directly in bed. He preferred to show Cade what he wanted. So the next words brought Cade to a dead stop.

“I’m scared I’ll freak you out, ngh, but… what if tonight I want you on top?” the man asked without looking away. After a short pause, he made himself perfectly clear. “I want you to fuck me.”